February 4, 2026 – Housing Partnership – Video & Transcript
February 4, 2026 - Housing Partnership
It is 7.04 and I will call the meeting to order. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025,
this meeting will be conducted in person and via remote access in accordance with applicable town
law to view the website, go to the website, the town website and the public body meeting information
to log on and we will have public comment and questions after the board has concluded
it with its questioning of our guests tonight. So I will turn it over to Rachel. Thank you, Mary.
So I'm Rachel Bratt. I've been on the Housing Partnership for a long time and I want to thank
our guest speaker, Dana LeWinter, who has had an illustrious career working in some of the key
housing organizations in the state and recently a few years ago landed at the Massachusetts Housing
Partnership, which works closely with the governor's office and the executive office of
Housing and Livable Communities and is one of the most knowledgeable and forceful advocates for
affordable housing I could have possibly imagined bringing into this conversation. The mission of
the Housing Partnership among our missions is to try to educate the public about housing issues and to
promote affordable housing in whatever way. Dana, I'd like to introduce you to members of the Housing
Partnership first. Kathy. Kathy Boundy. Kathy Boundy. Jono. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Dana. Jim Grumbach. So nice to meet you. Kathy. Kathy.
Kathy. Robin is a member of the Planning Board and has been the most active member of the Planning Board
of the Planning Board. We have several attorneys today, several of the members of the Committee of
Lawyers and have been working very hard in developing Wayland's own bylaw, which was a revision of an original
bylaw. We now have Brian Boger, who came in, who's the Executive Director of the Wayland House Authority.
And Gwynn Mallet. Gwynn Mallet. A local resident who is very interested in
sustainable housing and construction. Thank you. And this is Dana. And did I not introduce you? Oh, Gene.
My apologies, Gene. Virtual Gene. Gene Miller. Hi. Tuning in. Thank you for being here. And our town
planner, Robert Honnold. Hi, Robert. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you, Robert, for being here.
So I think we're ready to pass the baton on to Dana. And it's a joy for me to have you here,
Jane. I thank you so much. Yeah. Thanks for having me. And what Rachel didn't mention is I was her student.
So that's kind of set me on this path, truly set me on the path of all the housing advocacy and work
that I've done over the years. So thank you for inviting me and sending me down that path. And hi,
Robert. I've gotten to work with Robert before in Active. So nice to see you here. So yeah,
Rachel invited me here. And we spoke a little bit about some of the questions that you guys have
around accessory dwelling units. I'm going to give you and I know you are particularly interested in
affordable accessory dwelling units and that in your role here as the as the housing partnership.
But I'm going to give you a little bit of background on the state law and some resources that are
available and then some answers to the questions you have. Some I have to be honest, I do not have.
And just a disclaimer that I may get some of these answers wrong. I'm going to give you as many
resources as I can. Some background on myself. So I work at, as Rachel said, Massachusetts Housing
Partnership. We are a quasi state agency. And I'm the chief of public and community engagement.
One of the things that I've been lucky enough to get to do in that role is work on a lot of things
are happening at the state level. So last year, the governor or actually two years ago, the governor
passed the Affordable Homes Act. It's as part of that, there was an executive order that said they
were going to be putting together some commissions, one of which was to create a state housing plan,
which hopefully all of you have seen. Another was a to pull together a group of folks to
what we call the Unlocking Housing Production Commission. And my boss, Clark Ziegler, was on
that commission and I in my role about to be part of those conversations, helping to create that report.
Another thing that happened in the Affordable Homes Act, what something that we had been advocating at
MHP and that a lot of different organizations have been advocating for was accessory dwelling units by
right state statewide. And so another piece of the work that I got to work on was, okay, we've passed
this law, which was really, really wonderful. But what are we going to do with that? There are
regulations that needed to be created. So I got to be part of a working group that created the
regulations, heard comments, revised regulations, working closely with the Office of Housing and
Livable Communities. So you guys got to be part of that process. There was a public comment,
but ultimately what happened was regulations were created by the Office of Housing and Livable
Communities. The law, the Affordable Homes Act essentially said that across the state, other than
Boston, Boston is not subject to Chapter 48 zoning, ADUs are now allowed by right up to 800-900 square feet in
single-family zoning districts. That caused a lot of consternation. It was not just single-family
properties, it was zoning districts that allow single-family homes. So we had to interpret that and
turn that into regulations. What that now means is that every municipality can,
has to enact a zoning bylaw that allows for ADUs with those provisions. And there's some things that
municipalities can do and can't do. And I understand that you guys have revised your bylaw. And the
things that you can do is you can still require site plan review. You can still require restrictions
around things like Title V. You can still set reasonable setbacks, bulk, and height for properties.
And importantly for a lot of communities, you can still restrict ADUs from being used as short-term
rentals, Airbnbs, etc. What you cannot do in municipalities, and this is really important, was
you can no longer require that an ADU be owner-occupied, in a building that is owner-occupied,
that it be a family member that lives there. You can't require a special permit, of course,
or any other sort of special approval process. And there's parking provision. So within a half mile
of transit, you can't require any parking. Outside of that half mile, you can't require more than
more than one parking spot. So we got these ADU regs out. They're on the state's website. There's also a
model bylaw, which I'm sure you guys on the planning board took a look at and used to get your
application together. I do understand that it was adopted in 2025. I had a good question for you,
because there was still a potential conflict with parking in that bylaw. Do you know if that
was resolved? The Attorney General's Office struck the provision where we were requiring. So that was
struck, and so now you're in compliance. Okay, great. So you guys are in, you guys are in compliance,
which is great. What we know, just from unlocking zoning for ADUs, is that there was a lot of pent up
demand for ADUs. So we did a little bit of data collection and found that from January of 2025
through June 30th of 2025, this is incomplete data, but we understand at least 843 applications for ADUs
were submitted across the state and 549 of them were approved. Part of the Affordable Homes Act and
part of the regulations now require data collection around ADUs. And so starting this, the end of lap,
this past year, municipalities are going to be regularly collecting that data. So that June 30th data
was really a voluntary data collection. We reached out to as many municipalities as would answer and got
got as best information as we could. But going forward, we're going to have really clear data on
what those ADUs are and a lot of details about that, which will be really great.
So that's the ADU law kind of in general, but I know you guys are curious about resources and
the affordability piece. So a couple of resources that I would point out. First of all, there is the
Attorney General's Municipal Law. And I can send you all these links as well, Rachel.
I don't know if that's long. The Attorney General has a municipal law unit where they
make public all of their decisions. So that's where I was able to find the Wayland decision.
You can look at what other cities and towns have done. So if you're thinking about making changes to
things like your setback site, which I would say are generally the biggest provisions that are
flexible and might be keeping ADUs from being built in your community, I would go look at other
communities and say like, are ours a little bit too restricted? You of course have the right
to keep them, but there might be some things that you want to change in order to make as many ADUs
built as possible. And then there's also a lot of state guidance on the state's website around things
like Title V, addressing, insurance, and then there's webinars and things like that, as well as kind of just
why are ADUs good? If you're doing outreach and education within the community, like what could an
ADUs be? It's not just a granny flat. It could be for a lot of different purposes.
And now we're in the phase, now that we have allowed it by zoning, we're in the phase of really,
okay, how do we get these built? Even there was this pent-up demand, but we know that ADUs are not just
going to get built without some intervention. So you probably saw the governor made an announcement
a couple months ago, maybe two months ago, about a bunch of things that are happening in the ADU
space. So the first is an ADU design challenge. This is being run by the Office of the Executive
Office of Housing and Livable Communities. MHP is a sponsor, as are a couple of other partners. And
essentially, the challenge is to go out to the architecture community and solicit, you know,
plans and put them together into a guidebook for public use. Those will be available publicly. We're
going to be promoting the final winners sometime in April and putting those into a guidebook. The
goal of that is to really lower some of the costs and barriers. If you just have off-the-shelf
plans that work for a variety of types of housing opportunities, you just get to take that off the
shelf, go find a builder, build it. Hopefully that takes one step off the table for folks who are
curious about it. The other resource that was announced was ADU Financing for Mass Housing. So
Mass Housing is a sister organization of ours. They're the state housing finance agency. They have a
financing, a loan product that they are rolling out that they currently have a product and they're
just essentially making some changes to that product to allow it to be used for ADUs. And it's not
currently available, but they're right now working with their lender partners and it will be available
very soon. This is for households earning up to 135% AMI, so a little higher than what trust and CPAs
usually work with. And it's a fixed rate 20-year mortgage at a lower cost than a typical mortgage.
And it can be used to finance the construction of an ADU. So it can't be used for pre-development or
site design, things like that. But once you get to the construction phase and then you can be eligible
for up to 250,000 for detached ADUs and 150 for attached, which sounds like a lot of money. I will say
people think ADUs are much more affordable than they are. We're finding ADUs are costing in the 300
range for a detached ADU. So, you know, you still would probably have to come up with some money on
your own even if you're eligible for that financing. And there's one other existing financing program that
I want to mention before I get into our program at MHP. CDAC is another state cloud light agency.
They have a home modification loan program. And this is an existing program that is for
either older adults or individuals with disabilities. It can be used to do any sort of
modification that can make your home more accessible and make it so that you can live in
that property. It can be used for ADUs if the person who is either living in the home or the ADU is
an older adult or has a disability. And this is a 0% interest deferred payment loan. So you only pay it
back if you refinance, sell, or stop using the property as intended. And you can get up to $50,000
through that program. So that's kind of what's out there. And maybe I'll stop and see if there's any
questions before I go into some of the other stuff. I should have said folks should stop me and ask
questions. Is CDAC available to any income level person? CDAC is no, but I don't, I don't know that
off the top of my head, but it is a, it's a means test. It's a means test, yeah.
Can you just tell us the acronym what it is? CDAC, the community economic
development assistance preparation. Thank you. CDAC. So many acronyms. And yeah,
stop me if I use any acronyms that you don't know. It's probably created when you were a student
at TUF, but I can't remember. Yeah. And they're great, they're a great organization that, again, that
program is available for people, you know, separate from an ADU, but it's a great opportunity if you have
an ADU. And they actually on their website have a nice little explainer about how that program can be used
for, for an ADU. All right. So then the, the program that, that we're going to be operating at
MHP is the ADU incentive program. This is still under development. So there's not a lot of information
out there about it right now, but the goal of that program is funded through, through the state,
through HLC funds that we are going to be the recipient of. And the goal of that program is exactly
that to incentivize accessory dwelling units. The first phase that we're going to be really
trying to get going on is helping as many people as possible across the state understand,
can they build an ADU and what will that entail? So really looking at making sure people have
feasibility studies, and that's not a feasibility study where you just say, you know, a generic ADU,
what does it look like? Could it be on my property? It's actually getting someone to come out to your
property, look at your site. Are there site, site prep things that need to happen? Are there
infrastructure needs? What is the cost? What could actually fit there? Are there zoning concerns?
Even though it's by right, that doesn't mean that every property has all the right provisions for it.
And then what would this actually cost depending on what you're, what you're looking for and allow
people to be able to take that and then say, okay, now what's the next step? We're going to be
taking those feasibility studies in as well and understanding what are the barriers because
there's still other barriers in addition to into financing. Even though there is some financing
available, there's nothing currently available for construction or for pre-construction costs for
architecture costs, things like that, site development. So over the course of our program,
we're going to be rolling out additional incentives to help move those ADUs along. That will not be means
tested, at least at the beginning, where, you know, as of now, we really just want to make sure anyone
who wants to build an ADU knows how they can do it and what they need to do. I did want to mention,
so this is pretty new. So the vast majority of municipalities are now in compliance. They have
a bylaw. And now some of them are starting to think about what could they do to reach,
to make it easier to create affordable ADUs. So there's actually not a ton of examples out there. You guys are at the beginning stages of it. I did chat with a couple of people in my office who work with trusts across the state, with folks who have CPA funds across the state. There's like chatter. That's, that's what's happening right now in a lot of communities is people saying we want to do this, but we don't know how we don't know where we don't know how we want to prioritize. There's one good example that I can give you as of now, which is in Wellfleet. They have a program that they're running for accessory, affordable accessory dwelling units. And I can send you a link to learn a little bit more about it. They offer a $10,000 deferred forgivable loan. So again, that means you don't pay it back unless something happens and you're no longer in compliance. In exchange for that, you have to create a new ADU. So it's not for an existing one that you're then making affordable. And you have to rent it at an affordable rate to a lower moderate income tenant year round. They're on the case. So they care very much about year round tenancy for five consecutive years. So for $10,000, you get a five year affordable restriction on that on that unit. I did ask how they're funding this. And it sounds like they're funding it through donations as of now. There are complications in using things like CPA funds for accessory dwelling units because you wouldn't be able to have a short term restriction. And so that's how they're doing it in Wellfleet. I don't know if they're exploring other funding sources. What was the term of the restriction? Five year affordable to a low low or moderate income tenant year round. Can you say more about that restriction on trust money? Because that's obviously a very important one. Yes. Because that would have been one of our primary sources of funding for any incentives we would want to put together. Yeah. So this is not necessarily trust funds, but CPA funds that go into a trust. You may have other resources for your trust and you should look into what the restrictions are on that. For CPA, and again, I'm giving this all with caveats that I am not the CPA expert and I'm getting this from some colleagues, but basically, CPA is not really set up to be a temporary restriction. It's meant to be a long-term restriction. And so they, these, my colleagues who would be happy to chat with me more about it, um, or even the folks at the, um, conservation or the community preservation coalition, um, may be a good resource, but the way that my colleague Shelly was talking about is I would, the restriction would really need to be in perpetuity. Um, and so for that amount of money, getting a, a restriction of perpetuity may not be viable. You may not be able to incentivize people enough with that. Um, so there's not currently any examples that she can think of, of communities using CPA funds to do that. So that would be a restriction. I would have to go on to the deed. Yeah. Correct. Okay. Um, which makes sense for affordable housing, because that's got to be deed restricted, but right. It doesn't have to be a permanent judge. That's the thing. It could be a 10-year deed restriction or a five-year deed. Right. And it would come off when the, when the, at the first time limit, which is the way we've defined it and not by law. Right. Not by, not right. Right. So the question then was, you know, about, you know, could you do it as like a deferred loan that is, you know, repayable and then the restriction would come off. Maybe I just would want to say, talk to town council and talk to the community preservation coalition about this, because again, CPC funds are really meant to be creating more long-term affordability, not, not that short-term affordability. So, um, wealthy, I understand they do like a fundraiser. I don't know this for sure, but they do like a fundraiser for affordable housing. And I believe that's how they're currently, um, funding that program through these donated funds. But if you had another source of funds that didn't have the same kinds of restrictions, you could probably do, do something like that. Um, there's a lot of talk in other communities. And so for example, um, Westboro, I know is exploring how they might be able to do an affordable ADU program. Um, the, we had a training for trust back in December, and this was one of the topics. So there are a lot of communities out there that are in the early stages of thinking about that. Um, so if I hear of other examples and we probably will do another training on it, I will make sure to share with you. And if you guys crack that nut, uh, let us know and we'll, we'll share it as well. Um, the other program that, that you had asked about was the, um, Salem program. Um, so the Salem program is essentially, um, I want to make sure I'm getting this correct. So they get a tax exemption, um, for ADUs that are rented at an affordable rent. So it can't exceed 70% of fair market rent, which is, uh, a HUD, you guys know, fair market rent, you guys, you guys do. Um, local property tax. Yeah. Local, local. Yeah. Um, and without necessarily having a big restriction, correct. They had to get, um, a home rule petition in order to do that. Um, and they did that years ago before ADUs were legal, um, statewide. So I did speak to someone in Salem about kind of like, why did they go that route? And you know, this, again, this was before ADUs were allowed, um, by right. And my understanding is that they sought that exemption because they weren't, they were really trying to allow ADUs. We wanted to have as many ADUs built in, in Salem as possible. And they were getting a lot of opposition to that because folks were saying, these are not affordable, right? They're, they're, um, mahal affordable, not big affordable, right? And the whole state department. Right. And so they were getting a lot of opposition from folks that, you know, ADUs were not really affordable. And so, um, they tried a couple different tactics, a couple different times to get a vote. And when they came up with this idea of the exemption and getting some affordability, that kind of seemed to fly with their city council. And so they went for that home rule petition. Um, it's a pretty big barrier, you know, a hurdle to get a home rule petition, but there are folks in, um, Salem. I can definitely pass along the, the planner there. I don't know, Robert, if you know, Amanda, um, from Salem, she would be a great resource. She, she actually was there when it was adopted and, and implementation throughout. So she would be a great person to talk to about, you know, how successful has it been and actually getting, I don't know the numbers on what it's created. Um, what it did allow them to do was get their ADU, um, their ADU bylaw passed, but now you guys already have an ADU bylaw. So I'm not, not sure how valuable that is. Um, but it is an opportunity to create that affordability. Um, and then the other city, of course, that has a uh, a program is Boston. Um, they do not have to have ADUs by right, but where ADUs are allowed. Um, they have a program for a couple different levels of assistance, generally for households up to 135% of AMI. They do have asset limits that apply for this program as well. And they have two kind of actually three phases of it. So you can get up to $7,500 for design and permitting. So that's kind of that pre-planning stuff that I was talking about that no one is really supporting yet. Although that's a direction we'll probably go with our incentive program. Is that, is that a loan or is that a grant? That is a grant. And means tested grant. Yeah. And then if you proceed, you can get uh, a $50,000 zero percent interest deferred loan for construction. Um, and they also have some partner banks that they're working with that are offering additional, um, you know, favorable financing. Um, again, for folks that's up to that 135% AMI. Um, they also have a ton of resources that I would just encourage you to take a look at. Um, even if you're not, and again, they're, I don't know what their funding source is for that program. I'm guessing they have, they have a lot of different funding sources in, in Boston. So I'm guessing it's not CPA given the, the, um, the work that they're doing, but they also have on their website, a ton of resources about guidebooks and things that I think are really, really helpful if you want to explore it. Um, so that's kind of what we've seen on affordable options. There is the lowercase ADU resource center. Um, they used to be offering some financial assistance that's currently not, um, operating. I think just because they don't have funding for that long-term. Um, but they also have some information on banks that are offering really favorable ADU financing in addition to the Wellfleet program that they are helping out on. Um, let me see. I, you also had a couple of questions about, uh, I answered your question about CPAs first. Oh, you had a question about, um, local property tax incentives for affordable ADUs, um, and legal and policy implementations, implement implications. So there is one community that I know of that is considering it, uh, which is Egremont. They're a Western Mass, um, town. Um, they are exploring it not specifically for ADUs, but for all rental opportunities up to 150 percent of AMI. Um, under the regulation, and I have some guidance I can share with you, with you all on this, um, you're allowed to go up to 200 percent of AMI on this, on this tax abatement. Um, but Egremont is exploring it up to 150 percent of AMI. The biggest policy, so I would, I can get you some contact information for the folks there, if you're interested in chatting with them about, have they proceeded? This was back in December. Um, so have they been able to make any progress in what they're seeing? Um, the biggest policy implication that I've heard on this is that, um, you need to monitor it. So there's someone has to be on top of, you know, if you get this, um, abatement, are you actually renting your units at that affordable rate? And does assessing know, um, that it's restricted and, you know, kind of, there's just a little bit of, um, support that is needed in order to, uh, make it work? Oh, but there's no home will petition needed for that. No, there is no home will petition needed for that. There's just an application, I believe, you think you would need. And, and there's no, uh, deed restriction five years or anything that just you're talking about monitoring it by. Yeah, I think it's, let me, I should know this better. This is one of those places where I'm, I'm giving you as much information as I have. I'll show the, um, the guidance, but so you need to own the property and you can get an exemption for, um, the unit that is qualified. So you could have multiple units. This is for, like, for example, you, the example they give is you can have a three unit home and if only one of those units is rented an affordable rate, you just get an exemption on a third of your, of your taxes. Um, and then let's see.
Yeah, it has to be adopted at the local level. Um, and you have to adopt rules to determine the maximum amount, the annual occupant household income limit. So again, you can go up to 200, but that Egremont is exploring a lower one, the rate of rent that needs to be read to that. Um, and any sort of requirements of the owner, um, you know, maybe owner occupy things like that, that you might want to include. And so there's an application that you have to put together as a town to show that you have adopted those and then get approval of those. So both the owner of the real estate is needs tested and also the rent is affordable. That's two, two prongs of the owner. I don't think the owner, uh, is needs tested. Okay. As far as I double check, I believe so. Okay. Okay. Yeah, thank you. But that would also obviously need the monitoring, the annual monitoring. Yeah. You would need to do monitoring. Exactly. Okay. To get the rent. It makes more sense that the owner is not subject to the interest. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Um, I mean, I think the question is about how they're assessing ADUs in the property tax. So, right. You know, uh, and how much of an abatement is it for added value? Let's say, let's say it is an ADU that costs $300,000. Does that, I don't know if anybody knows the answer to that. Does that add $300,000 to the value of the house pretty much? And then what level of abatement? 100% abatement? And then how long do you have to rent it for? Like, it would be great to get, I don't know. I'm not sure where, where else, but yeah, I mean, there's some math that folks would have to be doing in order to understand how much of an abatement is worth, is worth the lowered rent than what you could get, but you know, again, there might be books worth considering this anyways, and it would be nice to give them an abatement for that. Okay. All right. That's helpful. Um, let me see if I can answer the last few questions you've had, unless they're, unless you guys have questions as I know I'm talking a lot. This is really helpful giving us examples that we don't know about. So I think the other, so there were a couple other kind of broader policy questions that you had. One was data collection. So I mentioned that we have some data from the first six months of when the, or around the first six months of when the law was in place and the regulations were in place. Um, but going forward, like I said, we're going to be getting, um, annual data on a bunch of things. It will not specifically include, I know you asked about affordable, whether things are affordable, but we will know how many ADUs have been approved, denied, how many have been issued a certificate of occupancy, we'll get information on square footage, whether it's attached or detached, the estimated value of construction, square footage, uh, I already said square footage, um, and whether there were any sort of variances that were needed. So even though ADUs are allowed by right, there are sometimes, you can still go ahead and get a special permit or a variance for, for things that aren't allowed. Um, so once we have that data, we're going to start to understand like, where, where are ADUs being billed? Where are they not? That might allow us at the, as part of our incentive program to come out with some best practices. Um, and the feasibility site will also be gathering to get a lot of information about what are the, the current barriers. Um, I, I have one of the, uh, one of the data points that you collect is whether the town has town sewer and to what extent the septic is impediment for, uh, municipalities. I mean, we might see a skewing of cities and towns that have municipal sewer, uh, doing more than others. So I hope that's a piece of data that you'll be collecting. We, not that we can do a whole lot about it, but it's. Yeah. Whether we collect it or not, we do have that data. So we could, we could, uh, compare it. Um, and I don't have a great answer for you on that. You know, I do just know that it is a huge concern and it's something that we haven't really figured out. I do also, I do know that there are some, um, you know, there are some restrictions at the local level that I would encourage, we're encouraging units values to take a look at whether they are needed for ADUs and, or if they are, um, overly restrictive for an ADU, right? If you're just adding one small, like 900 square feet in a, in a bathroom, do you need as much capacity as you are currently requiring? Um, but that's part of what we're hoping feasibility studies will, will tell folks, like you, you either have that capacity or you don't, this is the type of system you might need. Um, so people go into it kind of eyes, eyes wide open. Um, you did ask a little bit about the subsidized housing inventory, um, and what that would look like to get ADUs, um, affordable or not on, on the, um, subsidized housing inventory. So there is no conversation right now about, um, having ADUs count towards the subsidized housing inventory unless they are affordable. Um, and in order for an affordable ADU to get counted on the subsidized housing inventory, it would need to comply with the local action unit requirements. And so I can send you the guide, guidance for that, but essentially, um, it would have limits on, on affordability that, you know, essentially has to meet all of the 4DD requirements for affordability, for income limits, and for affirmatively furthering fair housing. So doing marketing and, um, making sure you're not, um, having any sort of fair housing violations. So you're, you're saying, I just want to make sure I'm getting this correctly, because it's important, that the ADU does not count as an additional unit for the denominator of... Oh, no, it does. Oh, it does. Okay. It does not count as an additional affordable unit. Oh, no, no, no, unless it's affordable. Correct. Okay. Uh, but it will. It has to meet all the affordable criteria. It will. So it is a denominator, doesn't it? It is a denominator. And of course, you know, that SHI is updated based on the census, so you have a little bit of time, um, for that to, to take, to take place. But it will, you know, as you build ADUs, should be making a plan for, um, you know, how you're also incorporating affordability into your housing growth here. Yep. Um, and I would just say as far as there was just like a last question about any future changes to the, to the state regs or research to identify any barriers. What I would say to that is this is still very new. Um, so we're still in the phase of, you know, it's been less than a year that the law has been in place. And, um, so as of now, there's no changes, um, anticipated. Um, I think we're learning a lot about best practices. Now that places have their bylaws in place, we're starting to understand, you know, are there setbacks that make the most sense? Are there restrictions that, um, municipalities have the right to put on ADUs, but, um, maybe restricting them more than they, than they want. So we're going to start learning a lot about that and gathering that data, um, and hoping that that will come to us through those feasibility studies. One of the things we are starting to see already, just in looking at, you know, a couple of feasibility studies is that even, um, even municipalities that have, um, bylaws in place that are allowed, that are legal and incomparable, they are sometimes not being, um, implemented correctly by the building department, or there's, you know, there's things that are kind of getting lost in translation and so more education, making sure that folks understand what is allowed and what's not. And I just want to stop for a second because I realized I used a little jargon a few minutes ago. So for anybody who's listening who may not be aware when I said denominator, uh, the state keeps an affordable housing inventory and it, uh, we are all required by the state to have no less than 10 percent of our year-round units as affordable. And the denominator is those year-round housing units. So for every, uh, every, uh, percentage that we've done, if we stay stable at the affordable housing unit number and our increasing year-round housing units are of compliance with the 10 percent goal on the subsidized housing inventory falls. So that's not desirable. People are concerned about that. Wayland is just around 10 percent now. And we, uh, we're, we're very aware of the issues of adding ADUs without having commensurate, uh, percentage of AADUs. And, uh, it's not just the subsidized housing inventory, but it's obviously the, the goal of our committee and I think the town and our housing production report is to promote affordable housing. So I just wanted to get out of the, the denominator jargon and just clarify that that means year-round housing units. Right. So mathematically that means if we got one affordable, uh, ADU out of every 10 ADUs, we would be fine. If it's got zero, you know, we, yeah, we're losing compliance. I mean, obviously there are a lot of year-round housing units. So the number doesn't change that quickly or easily because these are small numbers of units out of, uh, you know, how many units do we have in town? 4,000 units? Who knows? Our town planner might know how many housing, year-round housing units we have. Is he gonna hand up it? Robert? Um, that's not the reason why I hand up. Um, I was gonna ask the Zoom host to promote Chris and Gishard, who's in the audience, but the number of units we have round, um, I can get that number to you. It was just a, it was just a side question. Just trying to get you involved, Robert, you know, just bring you in. 5,000. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think there's, it's math, right? It's just math. So 10%, but what I would say is, you know, you could build, you know, a bunch of ADUs and then also do affordable housing in another strategy, right? Um, elsewhere. It doesn't have to be just in the ADUs. As long as you're continuing to create affordable housing opportunities, you're gonna stay above that 10%. Hi, Kristen. Hi there. I apologize for being late. Had some child care finagling to do, so I apologize, but I'm happy to be here. Kristen is the director of the Regional Housing Services Organization. Thank you for being here, Kristen. Thanks for having me. Um, I think, was there a question about the, um, the total units for the town in terms of SHI? Chris, is that you, did you want to, uh, is that Chris Herbert, I see? Hi, Chris. Chris is the executive director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard. Hi, folks. Uh, I'm a, and a friend of Rachel Bratt. Um, I'm also on the Housing Partnership Board in Lexington, Mass., and so was here to, to learn as well. Um, and at the risk of, uh, spreading false rumors, I, I believe that Lexington is in conversations with EOHLC about a pilot program to fund affordable ADUs through our LexHab subsidiary. Um, if that's something I'm not supposed to share with people, don't tell them you heard it from me. But, um, so I, I think the state is experimenting with ways of funding ADUs for affordability too. But I'm just here to learn, so I appreciate Rachel Bratt inviting me. The number of units in Weyland we have today is 533 housing units overall, which is about 10.2, is 2.0%, so we're just over 10% as of today. Okay. Yeah. And I, I didn't know about that Lexington one, but I probably should have. Thank you first for sharing it. Um, and I don't think you're sharing anything that you shouldn't have. And, um, I will look into that and share whatever, whatever I can learn. Because I think at this stage, everyone, it's the more the merrier, um, part of these conversations. It looks like Jean has a question. Well, it's, uh, hi. I just wanted to sort of float an idea that I've been kicking around. Um, you know, I've been thinking a lot about the incentives to build ADUs, both regular ADUs and affordable ADUs. And I firmly believe that things happen when you get the right incentives in place. So I think about that a lot. And I, I think about the fact that many towns in the Commonwealth are struggling with the same issue we're discussing in Weyland today. You know, everybody would like to be able to have some affordable ADUs. How could we do it? So I spent some time thinking about, um, state expenditures on housing kind of across the board and found myself thinking about the state emergency housing fund, which is a very large amount of money. Um, the Commonwealth spends a great deal, uh, every year, uh, sheltering people and helping them transition out of, um, hotel rooms and shelters. And, and I just wonder if there might be some kind of viable model instead of the state spending all this money on rents, which of course, then they have no residual value, right? You just spend rent. There's no residual value. There's no asset at the end. If there isn't some way to use those funds to create a stronger incentive to build ADUs that would be under multi-year contract to the state to provide emergency housing. So this is a substitution effect where instead of the state spending money on rents where there's no residual long-term value, they help private parties build a housing unit that will be under a multi-year contract to the state. Now I did, I ran some scenarios on this and I didn't know how to build in all the costs of floating a bond to front end load this to get money. Uh, and then, you know, the later flows would be, the state would be paying under contract to the owner of the ADU to, um, house person in the emergency program. But I did enough of the numbers to make myself feel that there's probably something viable there. Um, that it would be a way to get people into better quality housing than the state is paying for now. That, um, this paying for the same number of households housed per per, you know, days per year, the state could drive its costs down. Um, and there'd be the effect of, uh, adding to the overall housing, um, supply over time. Um, I worked my numbers on basically a seven-year contract between the state emergency housing body and private homeowners in which it was front, the relationship was front end loaded with a grant from the state. And it was forgiven in increments over a period of seven years, as long as they kept their unit in the program. And then the property only owners were getting a monthly flow of income paying for the people in the unit. I built in things like, um, uh, guarantee of, uh, 10 months of payment at a minimum. If the state didn't fully, um, uh, use the ADU capacity, I built in, um, a budget of $5,000 a year for repairs, if the tenants did damage to the property. Jean, Jean, this is a terrific idea. And I'm wondering, before we get into too many of the weeds, whether, uh, I don't want to interrupt, uh, this one, I was going on long. Go ahead. No, I think it's an interesting concept. Jean, I'd love to, I'd love to see your numbers. First of all, the other thing I would point you to is the state of Vermont has a somewhat similar, um, concept to what you're, to what you're talking about, um, where they, and they implemented this during the pandemic when they had ARPA money and they were looking for a way to use that ARPA money, create some housing opportunities and how some people who had emergency needs. So, um, I'd encourage you to take a look at their example as well. Yeah, I think that's a great, a really terrific suggestion, Jean, and we should look at it more carefully and, but get it, we shouldn't get into the math and all the assumptions that you made in your modeling at this point. Yeah, no, that's fine. Yeah, but we can come back to that in a, in another meeting, but, um, I, I want to make sure Dana can plow through whatever else she's got prepared, but thank you for that Jean. Yeah, I, I, I don't have anything about, um, I did, I wanted to hear from you all, uh, what you're looking for. I don't, I know that, um, Kristen's here and I know she's working with other communities, so I don't know if they, if other communities that she's working with have other ideas. What I would say, you know, what I would say to leave you guys with is a couple of things. One is looking back at your bylaw, make sure that it is allowing, um, as many ADUs as, as possible. I know you guys are also concerned about keeping your affordable, uh, number up and, but what I would say is ADUs are, um, um, the phrase I've been using is all ADUs are good ADUs, right? They're, they're not all going to be affordable, but they're going to create a new housing opportunity for someone who needs it, especially if they're going to be used year round for someone to live in it. So this could be, even if it's not affordable, it could be for your, you know, your elderly parents to, to live close by for a caregiver, for a, um, you know, young family member to move, move back, someone who works in your community. So that's the first thing I would say is to, I know you guys are concerned about affordability, but starting with making sure ADUs can get built is really important. And so looking back at those bylaws and making sure, and, and looking at applications that you're getting for ADUs and making sure that you're allowing the types of ADUs you want to see and not restricting them unnecessarily. And then as far as affordability, I do think there are some examples like the well-cleat one where even a small amount, I do know they've also executed a couple of those, um, those forgivable loans already. So not only do they have the concept, but they have a couple of examples where it's, where it's, um, in place. So they could give you some really good ideas about what was it that really threw the potential, um, borrowers to them. And was that $10,000 enough similar to what Jean is saying? Like at what, at what point does the incentive hit a point that it really encourages that, that affordability, um, and how are they monitoring it? I think they may have a relationship with the, someone here from the housing authority, might have a relationship with the housing authority for some of those, um, those monitoring, or maybe someone like an RHSO would be a good place to go for that type of monitoring. Um, and then I would also say to encourage you to, you know, get out the word about those existing resources that are out there. We'll be sharing as much information about our incentive program as soon as, as soon as we can. Oh, and that I think Egremont, if they've done a little bit of legwork on the, um, the tax, uh, idea, property tax, the property tax exemption, um, I think they might be a really great place to, to chat, um, see if they've made any, any headway with their town council about the opportunity. Um, what's interesting about it is they are not, like I said, they're not thinking about it just for ADUs. They're thinking about it for rentals more broadly, which could also be a great way to think about, um, affordability in Wayland, not just as ADUs, but in some of the rental opportunities. You think about it all the time. Yeah, exactly. So, um, so I think that's what I've got. I don't know if you, if folks have any other questions. I see Kristen has a hand there. Did somebody? Kristen. Kristen. Hi there. Can you hear me all right? Perfectly. Yeah. Okay, great. Um, I just had a couple of things and maybe you've already talked about them in the first half hour, so I apologize, but, um, I'm not sure if, Dina, if you've, did you touch on the CDAC's, like, home modification loan program? Okay. Um,
and then the other thing I was going to mention, um, and Robert, Robert and I had talked about this actually after the last meeting, but about dwelling conversions. So, there are some communities that allow for dwelling conversions, whether by special permit or by right. So, um, particularly in communities that have very large homes, um, and it allows for, um, an individual to divide up or carve up their existing house. Um, but it's different than an ADU. It's just, it's called a dwelling conversion, so you can be a little bit more creative in the size or the context. Um, for example, you could say any home built prior to, you know, 2000 can do a dwelling conversion by right. They can carve it up, um, and basically make a duplex out of it if they want to, because the house already exists, right? You're not creating a new building. Visually, it doesn't make a difference to people. It looks the same. Um, but you're really just carving that structure up, um, for maybe someone that doesn't need that large home anymore, but they want to stay in the community and it provides them a way to stay, but also, um, provides another housing opportunity for someone else. Um, and then the other thing I was going to mention is, um, Acton is looking into the property tax exemption, um, uh, initiative, right, or law right now too. They're doing some analysis with their assessor. Um, so they're, they're pretty far along. Um, one of the things that they're looking at now is particularly what population they would want to focus on to help, um, looking at, you know, what, what, um, household AMI is the most highest cost burden. And then also what is there out on the market today for rental. And so trying to, to figure out what they would focus on and then looking at the capital outlay to see where, you know, where their breakeven point would be. So they're a kind of a community that I would kind of pay attention to Bedford might be looking into it, into the future. Um, so those are the two that we're aware of that seem to have interest. That's kind of moving. Acton seems to be a little bit further along, but, um, they're still in the investigative fees. Kristen, could you just say again, where is the dwelling conversion program being implemented? Um, Acton has a dwelling conversion program. Um, there's another town too. I can't remember off the top of my head right now, but it's, it's similar. Okay. That's very useful. I mean, I'd say every ADU is a good aid, a good, a good thing, ADU, and every, every new dwelling that's created, it's a good new dwelling, whether it complies as an ADU or not, it would be a value added to have an extra unit. So I think we can paraphrase that. Thank you for those suggestions.
Do you want to mention, um, that the, Robin is, Robin Royce is also on the planning board and we have, the planning board last year wanted to be progressive and pass the amendments that were required to comply with the law, but also wanted at the time to pass more progressive and allow larger ADUs by special permit. And unfortunately it didn't work out because we wanted to, the planning board overall wanted to make sure that the law, all the regulations in the by-law that relates to the law passed and don't, didn't want to mix them up with a two third vote with a, assuming majority vote. And so the planning board this year after passing the, the by-right amendments is, is proposing to allow, uh, larger ADUs by special permit from the planning board at this springtown meeting. So the planning board is already trying to think of the next steps for just, um, plain ADUs that you can, you can build. I think then that the next step after that would be a little more brainstorming of how to, to incorporate more progressive steps to allow for affordable dwelling units or how to put in more carrots to encourage more people to build those. So there is more motivation that's happening and it is progressing, but it, a lot of those things, it takes time and energy from all different communities and, and members of different boards. So I do want to appreciate that all the feedback and all the work that people have done on the planning board and the housing partnership and the housing trust to kind of get us to this next step. Yeah. And I should have, I should have been clear. So the, um, the ADU regulations talk, if you read them, they talk about protected use ADUs, um, over and over. You'll see this acronym P ADUs. And these are those 900 square foot or smaller ADUs are protected use ADUs. And those are the ADUs that are covered in the, in the by-law. Um, but many communities do have, they, they call them different things. They call them the, the Arlington ADU or the Lexington ADU or, or just larger ADU that are often up to 1200 square feet. And they, they can, you don't have to require a special permit, but often they, they require a special permit for that, um, larger ADU. We decided to do special permits because I mean, some houses in Weyland, if you're looking at like a percentage of square footage, it could be huge ADUs. And it just seemed like it was an opportunity to just check in and make sure that people weren't really basically looking to divide up and condominiumize their house. And, um, but you know, in Weyland, we've had not had many applications since we, since the law, because most people want larger than 900 square foot. And so we have like some pent up demand right now. We think we've, there's a lot of people come like, when are you going to allow the large ones? When are you going to allow the large ones? Because it, you know, with larger lots and larger houses in Weyland, most people want much larger than 900 square feet. Is it, uh, the applications public? Yes. Are you asking, are you asking the question? Yes. Yeah. There's, I think the last time I knew there was like 9%, but, uh, I think, but we did the, the, the, the building department did all the reporting last fall. And there were at least like four or five that were approved or going through the process. So there's been, there's been some, but we've definitely heard from feedback at the public hearing from people like, we just need another 100 feet, square feet. If we just had another 100 square feet, just to make sure that we had enough space to, to do what we want to do for ADU. So the plane board was definitely, I can't just want to speak exactly what I was thinking, but we didn't want it to have a ratio or a percentage or have a cap. We were like, let's just see what happens. And if people need a hundred square feet, yeah, that's an, that's an, that's pretty much a no brainer, but someone wants 2,000 square feet ADU depends. Are you want a 12-year-old lot? Maybe, maybe not. Like just, we don't know what the, what the number of the magic number is. I know that was something we were trying to figure out, but I think at this point, like within the next hundred square feet, if you have a, a 1200 square foot of such an apartment and you need, you know, you need, maybe you need to make an ADU, you know, appropriate and someone needs, you know, a larger kitchen or they need a larger bathroom. Like those are considerations the plane board should be looking at when they need to make a special part in finding. So, so we'll, we'll see what happens. We'll see if there's a, you know, there's been a backlog and people are just going to explode when, when it's allowed by a special permit. We've, you know, one consideration, if it's a, people are looking to build a flat for elderly parents to move into, then they want it to be wheelchair accessible. So they need extra space for that, or they want a two bedroom and all these other things. But one of the other changes for making, I think I was explaining before the meeting started was that right now when our, our AADUs are all special permit, because we were looking to control the deed restrictions and make sure that people were working with the WHA and in the new bylaw, if it passes at town meeting, the AADUs under 900 square feet, go to special permit, go to by right. And then Robert will be in charge of monitoring all that paperwork instead of it coming through planning board. So I will say to the accessible question, that is a category under the design challenge, because we understand and there are, this is a new, new field for builders too. So there's a lot of great designs that are coming out there. There's a lot of manufactured AADUs out there that are, you know, they're easier and they kind of come together nicely and they can be accessible. They can be designed in a way that is, you know, making really good use. I got to tour a great, a great AADU when the governor made her announcement about some of the incentive programs, a really smart use of the 900 square feet. So I think that's part of it too, with the design challenge is helping people like see physically what a 900 square foot AADU could be because people, if you can't really visualize what that, what that is, and you think you need bigger. And I'm correct that they have to be publicly available to correct the design, the design. Yes, the design, the design winners will be put together in a public book. Um, just the winners or any. Um, that's a good, I actually don't know the answer to that. I think so. Yeah, I think it's anybody who submits, I think, right? Well, they're all public, they're all public entries. I think that I just want to comment that that's a really good idea, what you guys did. Yeah. I mean, it's a really creative, good idea, making these plans available publicly and providing an incentive for develop, you know, the car protects developers to, yeah, to participate. I, I want to make sure we have a little bit of time for Wyn Mallett to say a few words, but I want to make sure that this part of the conversation is nothing else, nothing else from me, and nothing else from you. Any, any other question? Wyn is here to talk a little bit about, they've been getting morphing into the physical side of construction, so this, I think, is a good opportunity, Wyn, for you to say a couple of words about your thoughts. Thank you. Yeah, um, I feel like I'm basically like the rest of us, you know, um, gathering information and so forth, but from the construction and a few observations, um, I mean, just the, uh, the, the builders who I've worked with, um, in this area, the, the cost is, is really, I mean, it's, it's almost a brick wall, so to speak, to build, um, uh, a 900 square foot building at, um, what's close to 400 square foot, and then if you do the, uh, what the mortgage would be on that, and if there are taxes, that's a very interesting question, where there are taxes, um, required on that, um, you know, before long, you're, you're really having to charge, and for the homeowner to then make a profit on, on the fact that they've built this, they're charging, you have to charge, you know, four thousand dollars a month rent, and that's, so that's, so there's, um, it's something that's not working at that end of the equation, and, um, some of the data that you were describing for the state, it would be very interesting to have would be just, what is the demographic of this first wave of, of ADUs, because I, I suspect that I, I have no basis for knowing this, but that a lot of them are sort of pent-up, um, call it sort of in-family solutions, okay, and that's, those are, are generally not cost conscious, there, there's a, such an overwhelming need, so what's going to happen next is, uh, a confrontation with sort of the, the nitty-gritty, where, uh, you know, suddenly the cost really is a major factor, um, and I'll, uh, address that momentarily, because, uh, uh, the comments that Jean made were, were quite apropos in her proposal to that, but the, the other thing that's, that's, uh, um, it's just kind of an underlying factor that I see, is that suddenly, um, uh, homeowners are, to, to access the affordability components, are really taking on a function that, that normally was provided by the state, okay, it's, they find affordable housing, suddenly, you know, people who are used to having their suburban house are suddenly, um, saying, well, I think this is a good thing, and I can use some income, um, but I'm also now becoming part of, in a sense, a government program, and there's very little understanding of the kind of life changes, uh, that it takes suddenly for someone who's been, um, you know, just a suburban house owner, suddenly be, uh, not only a landlord, but a landlord for someone from, um, you know, uh, radically different economic basis, okay, and there's enthusiasm for that, and there's also trepidation, so it's a, it's, it's a really important factor, um, and I don't know what kind of control, um, uh, I mean, we, we have an ADU on our property that was built on the old format, uh, uh, 30 years ago, um, and it's worked out, you know, just spectacularly for, as, as a benefit, and all that sort of thing, but when the person passes on, we, you know, considering, well, then how do we rent that, um, and we want to be able to choose who we want to live with, um, and, uh, whether they're low income or, or whatever, so that's, that's something that, that I think anyone entering into this, um, process needs to have a very explicit, what, what, what, what am I taking on in, in this process, because they won't, you know, most people will say, well, I, I need the money, but I, I'm afraid to be, um, uh, suddenly in something where I'm not under control of my own property, um, uh, but back to the, the economic thing, and one of the things that was really, uh, fascinating in Gene's analysis was just how, um, and I, I went through it, and, uh, came up with my own numbers, which I've run before, but, um, uh, uh, the, uh, it, to build, to build, to build a, uh, uh, an independent ADU that would be functional for a family, uh, a new, a new family coming, coming in, um, uh, is, um, which is not, not the, uh, you know, one of the things that, that made Gene's program work was that it really looked at what happens if someone takes an existing house and carves it up, okay, and call that an ADU. I'm, I'm, I'm a little bit confused as to the difference between house adjustment program, whatever that was, and why that just isn't an ADU, um, but that is a way to make it affordable, but, um, there's a, I think, a really interesting and important, um, category of, of housing, which I'm interested in as a builder, and as a designer, which is, um, um, in a sense creating a miniature neighborhood within the property, because that's what, that's what came about on our properties, you know, it's a, it's a neighborhood of two of, you know, what's become close friends and so forth, um, and it doesn't work financially to build that, so one of the things that I was, uh, going back to, um, um, first of all was the, the amount of incentive from the state that would be required to, to have that happen, um, which is at the upper end, but very, but could be very cost effective, as Jane outlined. The other thing was to, um, uh, replicate the, um, uh, called the triple-decker solution that made it possible for just about anyone to get off the boat and build a house in Somerville and make it work, you know, and so this is a question for, for town planning, which is, um, to me, I, I, it would, uh, seem necessary that to be able to build two ADUs on a property so that you have, you're creating, in a sense, a lateral triple-decker is the only way that you could, um, uh, really start to bridge that chasm of affordability at, you know, at, call it, um, um, you know, without going into, I know there are special programs that could make it work, but, um, uh, that's, that's one thing that, that I'd throw in there is that the, the, the towns and the town planning really have to look that, you know, uh, that kind of measure to make it work, um, and no, no increase in taxes and there, there are some septic ideas and so forth, but right now, um, the, um, it's, it's, the, uh, chasm and financially is very, very large. I would, yes, the, the financial barrier is the biggest one and I will say, anecdotally, your question about who these original, um, chunk of ADUs are for, it's generally for family members. That's exactly it. It's, those are the folks who are really ready to build an ADU and the money is not to say it's not a barrier, but it's not the only reason they're, they're building the ADU. So anecdotally, that, that is to your question about two ADUs. That's an interesting idea about how it would make it like a ladder. I like the idea of a lateral triple decker. Um, it's an interesting thing that this was a big, a big conversation in putting the regulations together. The way that the law was written, only one ADU can be allowed by right. Um, but towns can allow a second ADU on the same property by special permit. They have to have a special permit process. Um, they cannot allow it by right under the protected use ADU regulations, but you can have a special permit process for a second ADU on, on the property. So it might be something to do. And ours does that, but you very quickly end up bumping up against the multi-family zoning definition. And it's surprising how restrictive that is. And you can't allow that in a single dwelling district. So it's very, it's, it's not very flexible there, but we have allowed it under special permit in the new provisions that we're looking to bring to town meeting, but it's a little tricky. It's easier in a separate building. So if you build a garage and you put, you know, a big second story on it, you can divide that up into two ADUs. That's a little easier, but even then it's still questionable under the multifamily housing definitions. So is that because it's three makes it multi multifamily and not just sort of the duplex? It's, it's different when it's self-contained versus a separate building, but it's all worded so poorly that it just left us scratching our heads, but we did allow it by special. Condominium would be multifamily. No, condominium is when you have separate owners. So that's a different thing, but there's a point at which, you know, if you are taking your property and you're building a separate structure with separate units in it, shouldn't it be, there are people who say you should divide up the property then and have one piece of property and another piece of property. Um, and that avoids the multifamily issue, but it's just, it's a little messy when you start allowing more than one. It sounds like there'd be a need for substantial revisions in the bylaws. It's a good question because one of the main issues, uh, as a former zoning board member is, does it change the character of the neighborhood? And there'd be a lot of people saying, oh, it's about turning into Somerville triple deckers, you know, and that's changing the character of the neighborhood. So I think we'd have to make the zoning bylaw more friendly to increase documents. The multifamily zoning. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, but I mean, the concept of a dwelling conversion or an ADU or a lateral triple decker, they're all very appealing in terms of increasing the housing stock affordable, affordably with a small pay. I mean, I, I think they're all beneficial, but there are certainly people in town who don't want that and certainly something that would have to be put to vote at town meeting. So, so I think Wynn's point also is that, you know, I mean, if we look historically, you know, at where Wayland zoning came from, I grew up in this town and we used to have a very high value on privacy and large lots, you know, two acre, four acre lots. And I think that the culture has changed significantly. And you know, like what Wynn is describing, I'm not sure whether you have, is it condominium structure that you have on your property? No, it's, it's a, it's accessory dwelling. Um, it's, it's, it's essentially 80 years of primary dwelling, but it's two families who've been sharing a property, single owner, single owner for a long time rented or whatever. Yeah. But where I'm kind of going with this is that, um, for many years, there's been a fairly large group of aging Waylanders who were part of a co-housing group looking for somewhere to move. And initially, they wanted to move somewhere closer to transportation, which means out of Wayland because we don't really have public transportation. But as it was clear that, you know, I mean, there just was not availability, um, in the Metro Boston area for this, I think there were like 30 people in the group, like five, 10 years ago. And so they started reconsidering thinking, well, maybe there'd be ways to do things in Wayland on more of a co-housing model, which means it's, it's condominium, but it's not really condominium. It's multifamily, but it's more like ADUs. And we don't, we don't have a structure, um, that permits that kind of flexibility right now. So we're kind of, we're, we're tinkering with historical zoning. Um, you know, I mean, even the ADU it's limited by single family zoning and our multifamily overlay. Well, I mean, we don't know what we want to do with that. We really don't. Most people wanted to just comply, um, and not, unless it's never talking about again, you know, so we designated some already compliant areas. But I think, you know, going forward, we're going to have to be looking at different models of building and living. I could just pass on one thing that, you know, just occurred to me, which is that, um, if, if, if I want, and I have thought about adding a second ADU on our property, but, um, uh, for someone who, for whom that's either maybe a necessity or just something that they really want to do because they want to provide housing, um, they like that idea and they're willing to, to build and go through whatever that is in their property. But it's safe to say that every single neighbor who is not a person making that decision does not want to see that ADU go up. I mean, they might if they just happen to be an enthusiastic kind of person, but every single name, if you put up one ADU, every neighbor is going to wit is going to say my, what I had before has gone down a little bit with my view or traffic, I mean, whatever definition you have. So that, that's simply a fact of the whole process is that, um, they're going to be six people unhappy with every ADU that goes up and we just have to sort of agree beforehand that we're okay with that. I'm okay with being a little bit disappointed with, um, what I had before and what I have now because my neighbor put up an ADU and, uh, there's a little bit more noise and, you know, or, or just another sky, uh, roof skyline. Uh, uh, and I, and I say that because, um, that happens if you put up one ADU and well, it'll also happen if you put up two ADUs, but it's not really that different. It's that people do not want something to change from what they bought. They want no change. And that's just a, it's just a given within this process where we're actually filtering the housing issue into neighborhoods that have not had to deal with this as a personal issue. We built housing over there in large, you know, projects. So this is a very new kind of experience and people, I think just have to, um, uh, you know, it could be stated as, as a given. I just, I want to be mindful of the time. As we said, we would wrap up by 8 30. When I really appreciate all your many comments, they've been really informative and interesting. I just wanted to ask Dana a question. Um, one of the ways we could avoid some of these issues is if we did more internal conversion or repurposing of houses internally and given the size of many homes in Weyland, that it's more feasible than a small house, uh, elsewhere perhaps in the state. So I'm wondering whether any of your data breaks down, whether, and also given the cost issue, when you're talking about 400 square feet of, uh, $400 a square foot for new construction, that comes out to, if my math is correct, something like $360,000 for a 900 square foot unit. That is obviously, it's a chunk of change for, even if you're getting loans and whatever, it is still a very big investment in your property. Uh, and I mean, I have questions about whether or not we have any data on resale value. Probably don't, but this is going to be another area to track is to what extent is the resale value. If you have put three to $400,000 into your home, to what extent is that actually going to come back as value added? But I, I am curious, you know, one way to deal with that huge cost of, uh, new construction is if we can do more internal conversions, you know, it's Kathy, you wanted to say something. Right now with the planning board, it's just done by making it available by special permit, it's 900 plus, right? Right. So what's to prevent that? I don't understand the distinction between dwelling conversion and what's now allowed by a special permit. Clearly 900. Yeah. I think there isn't really one. I mean, you could, you could take half of your house and make it an ADU. If, as long as you give me in the somewhere dwelling conversion does not mean we're talking about ownership change, right? It is figuring out. Yeah. I think you're, I think you're right. It's just another term. Yeah. I mean, there's a point at which, you know, again, with the multifamily housing thing, because if you take one house and let's say you carve it up into four units, that's I think not going to fly in a single family, uh, single dwelling, uh, zone, but you know, welcome to apply. Yep. So, um, I, I think most people aren't going to do that. And I think a lot of ADUs, people I know in town who have, it's not an official ADU, it's generally an unofficial granny flat or something like that. It's in the house. It's the basement that got converted, maybe an attic that got converted. Um, I think there are fewer people who think I'm going to build a whole new structure. That's such a big investment. And we do, we do have people who want to do that, but it is a much bigger investment, you know, site prep and all this other stuff. Whereas an internal conversion, even if you put on a small addition to sort of bump out a wall here or there, it's not the same as building a whole structure. Um, but you know, as these design competitions all over the country, um, are pushing prefab units and even drop in place units, you know, the people who are buying containers and converting them into a shipping container and converting it into an ADU, um, you know, that the site prep gets done, but then you just, they literally lift it off a truck and drop it in place. I've got tiny houses. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, but, and those are again, prefab things and that decreases your costs, but site prep and septic are still a formidable cost. So they're obviously a town that doesn't have it. Yeah. Um, I, I misspoke. So actually we do have some updated data on the full year from some communities. And so to your question of attached and detached on the website, the state website, um, the updated one, and some of this was, again, it's not complete because some communities have not yet responded to the year end survey, but it looks like approved accessory dwelling units. There were 1224, um, 636 of them were either attached or interior. So that could be like an interior one or a bump out, like you said, and then 588 of those were detached. Um, the, the thing with interior, interior or attached, which is really more complicated is like, it is so house dependent, right? It's very hard to, we can get some estimates of like the general detached ADU costs this much. The prefab looks like this, this kind of general square can fit on your property. And you'll see there's a company called backyard ADU. They have like six off the shelf designs. And it's like, it's an L, it's a T it's an I that you can just kind of plop it again, their site prep and other considerations, the interior or attached ones are a lot more complicated and it's kind of runs the gamut. If you have to dig out more of your basement or even to add stairs or additional egresses. Um, and then I think the other consideration on that is, you know, again, now you are not only a landlord, but you have someone living physically, uh, closer to you than a detached one, but still a great option for, for a lot of people. And I don't know as much about the, the dwelling conversion, Kristen and Robert, maybe you can talk about the main difference of that is, would just be the size differential between an AD, like an ADU has to be accessory. That's part of the, the definition. Is that the main difference? That's part of the main difference. I think, um, in the past, a lot of AD, ADUs were always looked at as, um, being accessory to in a few ways. So smaller to, um, some communities take it a little bit further that, or in the past too, that it had, the owner had to reside on the property with a dwelling conversion. That's not the case. It can be condominiumized and sold out as two separate units, um, or more, you know, it could be allowed easily in a single family district. Um, it just depends on what you want to do locally in your zoning. You know, you could, a lot of communities are changing now and allowing for, um, duplexes where only single family used to be allowed. Um, so it's really just a different way of thinking about, um, your zoning and, and what the community may be ready to discuss, um, at different times. So, um, there's also opportunities, I think here to pair, um, housing with conservation. So, you know, if you're still seeing subdivisions in your community where the lot gets entirely carved up into individual lots, you know, you could start thinking about, um, you know, how can you preserve some open space and get the homes clustered together, but allowing for maybe some incentives in terms of density bonus if you have smaller units, right? Um, and so looking at different metrics and, um, tools to do that, but bringing both of those groups together, the, the housing advocates with the conservation advocates, um, so that when you drive by, you can't maybe really see it, but, um, you're, and you're also preserving natural resources, but, um, you know, for newer homes and people that want to move into the community, um, they could be tucked back together, smaller units, but maybe more of them, but covering the same amount of land. So just thinking about things in a different way. Whelan has a conservation cluster bylaw, um, that was fairly innovative, you know, 40, 50 years ago, and it has been updated, but it may be, could be improved. Okay. Let's try to wrap up and any final comments or questions before I, um, I just wanted to maybe ask for a little bit of, um, insight. Oh, is Brian still here? Yeah. So, I mean, it, it just, it is the fact that for affordable ADUs, there is always going to be concern, um, in neighborhoods about bringing down property values, and there are always going to be concerns, um, for landlords about not having control over your property. And, you know, for example, if you have a section eight tenant, um, who is not paying the rent or is damaging the property, it's extremely, extremely difficult to extricate oneself. Um, what can we learn from housing authority experience to maybe anticipate and try to do a little better going forward so that we, um, can encourage building affordable ADUs? Yeah, I mean, um, it's, it's, it is, we are, we live in the state of Massachusetts and evicting people for non-payment, uh, and damaging property. And so, uh, extremely neighbors is, it's almost impossible. Um, so, um, I would caution somebody going into the section eight program like that, um, because we run into that all the time and we're, we're always hearing from neighbors, uh, somebody to take the trash out or, you know, somebody's got bicycles in their front yard or abandoned cars and so forth. It's hard to get movement on those issues. I would say one, one thing that we are going to be exploring as part of the incentive program is you several times, a couple of folks have made this point that you're essentially creating landlords where you may not have been a landlord before. And we do have landlord training, um, education that is done at the state level. Um, we run first time home buyer. Well, we work with partners. We run a first time home buyer program, um, mortgage program. And we work with a lot of partners to do first time home buyer education. And a lot of those first time home buyers are also buying multi-family properties too. And, and three family properties. And so they do landlord training. Um, I think that's part of it, the education piece, right? There is, of course, there's going to be some stigma and bias against affordable housing. I don't want to deny that, but when you are becoming a landlord, regardless of who your tenant is, you need to know what your, your, both your rights and your responsibilities are. And so I think pairing any sort of ADU creation with landlord education and, you know, helping folks that they can be, you know, a good landlord, they can, they can do what they need to do and they can go into it. Eyes Wide Open is part of our, part of our conversations. Um, and even for folks who are going to be renting an ADU to a family member, it's a new relationship that they're creating. Um, even if money's not changing hands, right? Now you've got your family member living in a property that you own and you're responsible to them. So I think it's a conversation that should be having, people should be having about whether they become a landlord of, uh, a triple decker or an ADU and, and what their rights and responsibilities are. Great points. All right. I think, uh, I think we're ready to wrap up and let Dana go home. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dana.
Thanks so much for doing this. Yeah. Mary, I think, uh, we're ready for public comments. Is that right? No. I think that the public has commented. Yes. I just want to make sure there's nobody else lurking in any place else that. That's it. Thank you, public, for commenting. It's been a wonderful public.
Jane would like to, um, say a few words about, uh, the 212 of the constituent report, uh, if you're willing to. As long as it's okay, because it wasn't on the agenda. Well, it's just, there's no discussion about it. It's just a report. Okay. Yeah. We should let's say the board of housing program. The town owns a massive property that we took for tax time. And there's a lot of, um, effort gone into it that Jean's committee's been on about how to repurpose that for home. I'll stay and listen. You could, uh, do you want to tell us what the 212 committee has come up with? Yeah, sure. Um, and I'll mention Brian was on the committee too. So Brian, speak up. Um, uh, we, we've concluded our work. Uh, we've finished our report, which will now go to the selectmen. It's a very interesting process. Um, the committee basically was an advisory body to collect information that might be useful to the select board in their decision-making about utilization of that site. So, uh, Tom Fay did a great job of having many, many visitors, um, come and see us who were, uh, builders or, uh, financial groups or, uh, care providers, um, in the industry, ranging from, uh, very large organizations with hundreds of properties to very small organizations who had done one property and, um, heard about all kinds of models from, um, profit, nonprofit, um, family organized projects, uh, where people got together who couldn't find housing for their disabled family member and got together and created a property, um, went pretty well. I, I think one of the things that, uh, went well in the committee that I'm happy about is in the recommendations, um, um, we're suggesting that every effort be made to organize the creation of the property, uh, so that it will, uh, add units to the SHI inventory. Um, that's not a foregone conclusion. Some properties don't, but we're hoping that the select board will, uh, look for, uh, something, um, that will provide those units. Um, there was, you know, the, it was difficult for the committee to come to a consensus and on some matters. And I did end up writing a minority opinion, uh, in the report, uh, in the report, which that was a first for me. Um, but basically said that it was my general sense that the committee felt that they had to, um, treat the zoning policy as the dominant policy and decision-making about the site, uh, rather than looking at, uh, things like the town master plan and the housing production plan, um, that put forth messages about the urgency of building, um, housing for disabled people that, you know, just units in general and more importantly affordable units. Um, and so I basically wrote a minority opinion asking that the select board think about, um, you know, under what situations can you decide that you treat policy a little differently so that you can put more units on that site than, um, we're really under discussion most of the time in the committee. Um, so we'll, we'll see how that's received. Um, Brian, would you like to add to that? Yeah, I think the community did a great job and, uh, we heard it was a real learning experience. It's a, when I started, when I threw this thing out, I, I was very simplistic in my approach and I found out how complicated different populations, uh, funding sources and so forth. So we really learned a lot, but, um, yeah, I think Jean's point about, um, utilization of properties of more than four acres there, uh, would have been nice to, uh, to utilize, get more utilization out of the site, given the, the, the asset that the town is, is contributing to this project. But, uh, anything we get built there will be a step in the, step forward in the right direction. We don't get many tax title properties. No, we don't. Is there something to preclude affordable housing separate from housing for a group home with people with disabilities so they can be integrated? In other words, an inclusive community existing on the four acres? Yeah, I, I, I think that the, the committee was pretty set on a smaller, smaller development. Just one district. They didn't, did they identify a single? They didn't, or two, two group homes? Um, well, probably two buildings, maybe eight to twelve units. It's, it sounds like that's what the outcome will be. Eight to twelve total. Okay, but that, does that mean that's what the select board will agree with, or they could, no, select, select boards would just advise me, it's like board, uh, can make their own decision. And when they have a, uh, have an on their agenda, we should be there to, yeah. Yeah. And, and express our business. That's correct. You recommended that they, the select board issue an RFP to see, and it's pretty broad, because we don't want to limit, you know, the finances and the type of services that will be provided. It's, it's, it's really going to depend on a developer and what, what associations they have with, uh, eight different agency service providers and what's financially feasible. The town has, uh, on, on many levels has recently become very focused on trying to do group homes. We do have a group home in town, but there's another developer who's got a property where he's trying to do a group home. And I think there's a lot of, uh, town-wide support for that. We're working hard on that. This is one of the major efforts. Any, thank you, Brian. Thank you, Jean. Any final comments before we, are we ready? Are we, thank you, Dana, again, for being here. Very good. Are you ready to, to adjourn? Yes. Is there a motion? They move to adjourn. And the second, Kathy. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Thank you.
to make it easier to create affordable ADUs. So there's actually not a ton of examples out there. You guys are at the beginning stages of it. I did chat with a couple of people in my office who work with trusts across the state, with folks who have CPA funds across the state. There's like chatter. That's, that's what's happening right now in a lot of communities is people saying we want to do this, but we don't know how we don't know where we don't know how we want to prioritize. There's one good example that I can give you as of now, which is in Wellfleet. They have a program that they're running for accessory, affordable accessory dwelling units. And I can send you a link to learn a little bit more about it. They offer a $10,000 deferred forgivable loan. So again, that means you don't pay it back unless something happens and you're no longer in compliance. In exchange for that, you have to create a new ADU. So it's not for an existing one that you're then making affordable. And you have to rent it at an affordable rate to a lower moderate income tenant year round. They're on the case. So they care very much about year round tenancy for five consecutive years. So for $10,000, you get a five year affordable restriction on that on that unit. I did ask how they're funding this. And it sounds like they're funding it through donations as of now. There are complications in using things like CPA funds for accessory dwelling units because you wouldn't be able to have a short term restriction. And so that's how they're doing it in Wellfleet. I don't know if they're exploring other funding sources. What was the term of the restriction? Five year affordable to a low low or moderate income tenant year round. Can you say more about that restriction on trust money? Because that's obviously a very important one. Yes. Because that would have been one of our primary sources of funding for any incentives we would want to put together. Yeah. So this is not necessarily trust funds, but CPA funds that go into a trust. You may have other resources for your trust and you should look into what the restrictions are on that. For CPA, and again, I'm giving this all with caveats that I am not the CPA expert and I'm getting this from some colleagues, but basically, CPA is not really set up to be a temporary restriction. It's meant to be a long-term restriction. And so they, these, my colleagues who would be happy to chat with me more about it, um, or even the folks at the, um, conservation or the community preservation coalition, um, may be a good resource, but the way that my colleague Shelly was talking about is I would, the restriction would really need to be in perpetuity. Um, and so for that amount of money, getting a, a restriction of perpetuity may not be viable. You may not be able to incentivize people enough with that. Um, so there's not currently any examples that she can think of, of communities using CPA funds to do that. So that would be a restriction. I would have to go on to the deed. Yeah. Correct. Okay. Um, which makes sense for affordable housing, because that's got to be deed restricted, but right. It doesn't have to be a permanent judge. That's the thing. It could be a 10-year deed restriction or a five-year deed. Right. And it would come off when the, when the, at the first time limit, which is the way we've defined it and not by law. Right. Not by, not right. Right. So the question then was, you know, about, you know, could you do it as like a deferred loan that is, you know, repayable and then the restriction would come off. Maybe I just would want to say, talk to town council and talk to the community preservation coalition about this, because again, CPC funds are really meant to be creating more long-term affordability, not, not that short-term affordability. So, um, wealthy, I understand they do like a fundraiser. I don't know this for sure, but they do like a fundraiser for affordable housing. And I believe that's how they're currently, um, funding that program through these donated funds. But if you had another source of funds that didn't have the same kinds of restrictions, you could probably do, do something like that. Um, there's a lot of talk in other communities. And so for example, um, Westboro, I know is exploring how they might be able to do an affordable ADU program. Um, the, we had a training for trust back in December, and this was one of the topics. So there are a lot of communities out there that are in the early stages of thinking about that. Um, so if I hear of other examples and we probably will do another training on it, I will make sure to share with you. And if you guys crack that nut, uh, let us know and we'll, we'll share it as well. Um, the other program that, that you had asked about was the, um, Salem program. Um, so the Salem program is essentially, um, I want to make sure I'm getting this correct. So they get a tax exemption, um, for ADUs that are rented at an affordable rent. So it can't exceed 70% of fair market rent, which is, uh, a HUD, you guys know, fair market rent, you guys, you guys do. Um, local property tax. Yeah. Local, local. Yeah. Um, and without necessarily having a big restriction, correct. They had to get, um, a home rule petition in order to do that. Um, and they did that years ago before ADUs were legal, um, statewide. So I did speak to someone in Salem about kind of like, why did they go that route? And you know, this, again, this was before ADUs were allowed, um, by right. And my understanding is that they sought that exemption because they weren't, they were really trying to allow ADUs. We wanted to have as many ADUs built in, in Salem as possible. And they were getting a lot of opposition to that because folks were saying, these are not affordable, right? They're, they're, um, mahal affordable, not big affordable, right? And the whole state department. Right. And so they were getting a lot of opposition from folks that, you know, ADUs were not really affordable. And so, um, they tried a couple different tactics, a couple different times to get a vote. And when they came up with this idea of the exemption and getting some affordability, that kind of seemed to fly with their city council. And so they went for that home rule petition. Um, it's a pretty big barrier, you know, a hurdle to get a home rule petition, but there are folks in, um, Salem. I can definitely pass along the, the planner there. I don't know, Robert, if you know, Amanda, um, from Salem, she would be a great resource. She, she actually was there when it was adopted and, and implementation throughout. So she would be a great person to talk to about, you know, how successful has it been and actually getting, I don't know the numbers on what it's created. Um, what it did allow them to do was get their ADU, um, their ADU bylaw passed, but now you guys already have an ADU bylaw. So I'm not, not sure how valuable that is. Um, but it is an opportunity to create that affordability. Um, and then the other city, of course, that has a uh, a program is Boston. Um, they do not have to have ADUs by right, but where ADUs are allowed. Um, they have a program for a couple different levels of assistance, generally for households up to 135% of AMI. They do have asset limits that apply for this program as well. And they have two kind of actually three phases of it. So you can get up to $7,500 for design and permitting. So that's kind of that pre-planning stuff that I was talking about that no one is really supporting yet. Although that's a direction we'll probably go with our incentive program. Is that, is that a loan or is that a grant? That is a grant. And means tested grant. Yeah. And then if you proceed, you can get uh, a $50,000 zero percent interest deferred loan for construction. Um, and they also have some partner banks that they're working with that are offering additional, um, you know, favorable financing. Um, again, for folks that's up to that 135% AMI. Um, they also have a ton of resources that I would just encourage you to take a look at. Um, even if you're not, and again, they're, I don't know what their funding source is for that program. I'm guessing they have, they have a lot of different funding sources in, in Boston. So I'm guessing it's not CPA given the, the, um, the work that they're doing, but they also have on their website, a ton of resources about guidebooks and things that I think are really, really helpful if you want to explore it. Um, so that's kind of what we've seen on affordable options. There is the lowercase ADU resource center. Um, they used to be offering some financial assistance that's currently not, um, operating. I think just because they don't have funding for that long-term. Um, but they also have some information on banks that are offering really favorable ADU financing in addition to the Wellfleet program that they are helping out on. Um, let me see. I, you also had a couple of questions about, uh, I answered your question about CPAs first. Oh, you had a question about, um, local property tax incentives for affordable ADUs, um, and legal and policy implementations, implement implications. So there is one community that I know of that is considering it, uh, which is Egremont. They're a Western Mass, um, town. Um, they are exploring it not specifically for ADUs, but for all rental opportunities up to 150 percent of AMI. Um, under the regulation, and I have some guidance I can share with you, with you all on this, um, you're allowed to go up to 200 percent of AMI on this, on this tax abatement. Um, but Egremont is exploring it up to 150 percent of AMI. The biggest policy, so I would, I can get you some contact information for the folks there, if you're interested in chatting with them about, have they proceeded? This was back in December. Um, so have they been able to make any progress in what they're seeing? Um, the biggest policy implication that I've heard on this is that, um, you need to monitor it. So there's someone has to be on top of, you know, if you get this, um, abatement, are you actually renting your units at that affordable rate? And does assessing know, um, that it's restricted and, you know, kind of, there's just a little bit of, um, support that is needed in order to, uh, make it work? Oh, but there's no home will petition needed for that. No, there is no home will petition needed for that. There's just an application, I believe, you think you would need. And, and there's no, uh, deed restriction five years or anything that just you're talking about monitoring it by. Yeah, I think it's, let me, I should know this better. This is one of those places where I'm, I'm giving you as much information as I have. I'll show the, um, the guidance, but so you need to own the property and you can get an exemption for, um, the unit that is qualified. So you could have multiple units. This is for, like, for example, you, the example they give is you can have a three unit home and if only one of those units is rented an affordable rate, you just get an exemption on a third of your, of your taxes. Um, and then let's see.
Yeah, it has to be adopted at the local level. Um, and you have to adopt rules to determine the maximum amount, the annual occupant household income limit. So again, you can go up to 200, but that Egremont is exploring a lower one, the rate of rent that needs to be read to that. Um, and any sort of requirements of the owner, um, you know, maybe owner occupy things like that, that you might want to include. And so there's an application that you have to put together as a town to show that you have adopted those and then get approval of those. So both the owner of the real estate is needs tested and also the rent is affordable. That's two, two prongs of the owner. I don't think the owner, uh, is needs tested. Okay. As far as I double check, I believe so. Okay. Okay. Yeah, thank you. But that would also obviously need the monitoring, the annual monitoring. Yeah. You would need to do monitoring. Exactly. Okay. To get the rent. It makes more sense that the owner is not subject to the interest. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Um, I mean, I think the question is about how they're assessing ADUs in the property tax. So, right. You know, uh, and how much of an abatement is it for added value? Let's say, let's say it is an ADU that costs $300,000. Does that, I don't know if anybody knows the answer to that. Does that add $300,000 to the value of the house pretty much? And then what level of abatement? 100% abatement? And then how long do you have to rent it for? Like, it would be great to get, I don't know. I'm not sure where, where else, but yeah, I mean, there's some math that folks would have to be doing in order to understand how much of an abatement is worth, is worth the lowered rent than what you could get, but you know, again, there might be books worth considering this anyways, and it would be nice to give them an abatement for that. Okay. All right. That's helpful. Um, let me see if I can answer the last few questions you've had, unless they're, unless you guys have questions as I know I'm talking a lot. This is really helpful giving us examples that we don't know about. So I think the other, so there were a couple other kind of broader policy questions that you had. One was data collection. So I mentioned that we have some data from the first six months of when the, or around the first six months of when the law was in place and the regulations were in place. Um, but going forward, like I said, we're going to be getting, um, annual data on a bunch of things. It will not specifically include, I know you asked about affordable, whether things are affordable, but we will know how many ADUs have been approved, denied, how many have been issued a certificate of occupancy, we'll get information on square footage, whether it's attached or detached, the estimated value of construction, square footage, uh, I already said square footage, um, and whether there were any sort of variances that were needed. So even though ADUs are allowed by right, there are sometimes, you can still go ahead and get a special permit or a variance for, for things that aren't allowed. Um, so once we have that data, we're going to start to understand like, where, where are ADUs being billed? Where are they not? That might allow us at the, as part of our incentive program to come out with some best practices. Um, and the feasibility site will also be gathering to get a lot of information about what are the, the current barriers. Um, I, I have one of the, uh, one of the data points that you collect is whether the town has town sewer and to what extent the septic is impediment for, uh, municipalities. I mean, we might see a skewing of cities and towns that have municipal sewer, uh, doing more than others. So I hope that's a piece of data that you'll be collecting. We, not that we can do a whole lot about it, but it's. Yeah. Whether we collect it or not, we do have that data. So we could, we could, uh, compare it. Um, and I don't have a great answer for you on that. You know, I do just know that it is a huge concern and it's something that we haven't really figured out. I do also, I do know that there are some, um, you know, there are some restrictions at the local level that I would encourage, we're encouraging units values to take a look at whether they are needed for ADUs and, or if they are, um, overly restrictive for an ADU, right? If you're just adding one small, like 900 square feet in a, in a bathroom, do you need as much capacity as you are currently requiring? Um, but that's part of what we're hoping feasibility studies will, will tell folks, like you, you either have that capacity or you don't, this is the type of system you might need. Um, so people go into it kind of eyes, eyes wide open. Um, you did ask a little bit about the subsidized housing inventory, um, and what that would look like to get ADUs, um, affordable or not on, on the, um, subsidized housing inventory. So there is no conversation right now about, um, having ADUs count towards the subsidized housing inventory unless they are affordable. Um, and in order for an affordable ADU to get counted on the subsidized housing inventory, it would need to comply with the local action unit requirements. And so I can send you the guide, guidance for that, but essentially, um, it would have limits on, on affordability that, you know, essentially has to meet all of the 4DD requirements for affordability, for income limits, and for affirmatively furthering fair housing. So doing marketing and, um, making sure you're not, um, having any sort of fair housing violations. So you're, you're saying, I just want to make sure I'm getting this correctly, because it's important, that the ADU does not count as an additional unit for the denominator of... Oh, no, it does. Oh, it does. Okay. It does not count as an additional affordable unit. Oh, no, no, no, unless it's affordable. Correct. Okay. Uh, but it will. It has to meet all the affordable criteria. It will. So it is a denominator, doesn't it? It is a denominator. And of course, you know, that SHI is updated based on the census, so you have a little bit of time, um, for that to, to take, to take place. But it will, you know, as you build ADUs, should be making a plan for, um, you know, how you're also incorporating affordability into your housing growth here. Yep. Um, and I would just say as far as there was just like a last question about any future changes to the, to the state regs or research to identify any barriers. What I would say to that is this is still very new. Um, so we're still in the phase of, you know, it's been less than a year that the law has been in place. And, um, so as of now, there's no changes, um, anticipated. Um, I think we're learning a lot about best practices. Now that places have their bylaws in place, we're starting to understand, you know, are there setbacks that make the most sense? Are there restrictions that, um, municipalities have the right to put on ADUs, but, um, maybe restricting them more than they, than they want. So we're going to start learning a lot about that and gathering that data, um, and hoping that that will come to us through those feasibility studies. One of the things we are starting to see already, just in looking at, you know, a couple of feasibility studies is that even, um, even municipalities that have, um, bylaws in place that are allowed, that are legal and incomparable, they are sometimes not being, um, implemented correctly by the building department, or there's, you know, there's things that are kind of getting lost in translation and so more education, making sure that folks understand what is allowed and what's not. And I just want to stop for a second because I realized I used a little jargon a few minutes ago. So for anybody who's listening who may not be aware when I said denominator, uh, the state keeps an affordable housing inventory and it, uh, we are all required by the state to have no less than 10 percent of our year-round units as affordable. And the denominator is those year-round housing units. So for every, uh, every, uh, percentage that we've done, if we stay stable at the affordable housing unit number and our increasing year-round housing units are of compliance with the 10 percent goal on the subsidized housing inventory falls. So that's not desirable. People are concerned about that. Wayland is just around 10 percent now. And we, uh, we're, we're very aware of the issues of adding ADUs without having commensurate, uh, percentage of AADUs. And, uh, it's not just the subsidized housing inventory, but it's obviously the, the goal of our committee and I think the town and our housing production report is to promote affordable housing. So I just wanted to get out of the, the denominator jargon and just clarify that that means year-round housing units. Right. So mathematically that means if we got one affordable, uh, ADU out of every 10 ADUs, we would be fine. If it's got zero, you know, we, yeah, we're losing compliance. I mean, obviously there are a lot of year-round housing units. So the number doesn't change that quickly or easily because these are small numbers of units out of, uh, you know, how many units do we have in town? 4,000 units? Who knows? Our town planner might know how many housing, year-round housing units we have. Is he gonna hand up it? Robert? Um, that's not the reason why I hand up. Um, I was gonna ask the Zoom host to promote Chris and Gishard, who's in the audience, but the number of units we have round, um, I can get that number to you. It was just a, it was just a side question. Just trying to get you involved, Robert, you know, just bring you in. 5,000. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think there's, it's math, right? It's just math. So 10%, but what I would say is, you know, you could build, you know, a bunch of ADUs and then also do affordable housing in another strategy, right? Um, elsewhere. It doesn't have to be just in the ADUs. As long as you're continuing to create affordable housing opportunities, you're gonna stay above that 10%. Hi, Kristen. Hi there. I apologize for being late. Had some child care finagling to do, so I apologize, but I'm happy to be here. Kristen is the director of the Regional Housing Services Organization. Thank you for being here, Kristen. Thanks for having me. Um, I think, was there a question about the, um, the total units for the town in terms of SHI? Chris, is that you, did you want to, uh, is that Chris Herbert, I see? Hi, Chris. Chris is the executive director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard. Hi, folks. Uh, I'm a, and a friend of Rachel Bratt. Um, I'm also on the Housing Partnership Board in Lexington, Mass., and so was here to, to learn as well. Um, and at the risk of, uh, spreading false rumors, I, I believe that Lexington is in conversations with EOHLC about a pilot program to fund affordable ADUs through our LexHab subsidiary. Um, if that's something I'm not supposed to share with people, don't tell them you heard it from me. But, um, so I, I think the state is experimenting with ways of funding ADUs for affordability too. But I'm just here to learn, so I appreciate Rachel Bratt inviting me. The number of units in Weyland we have today is 533 housing units overall, which is about 10.2, is 2.0%, so we're just over 10% as of today. Okay. Yeah. And I, I didn't know about that Lexington one, but I probably should have. Thank you first for sharing it. Um, and I don't think you're sharing anything that you shouldn't have. And, um, I will look into that and share whatever, whatever I can learn. Because I think at this stage, everyone, it's the more the merrier, um, part of these conversations. It looks like Jean has a question. Well, it's, uh, hi. I just wanted to sort of float an idea that I've been kicking around. Um, you know, I've been thinking a lot about the incentives to build ADUs, both regular ADUs and affordable ADUs. And I firmly believe that things happen when you get the right incentives in place. So I think about that a lot. And I, I think about the fact that many towns in the Commonwealth are struggling with the same issue we're discussing in Weyland today. You know, everybody would like to be able to have some affordable ADUs. How could we do it? So I spent some time thinking about, um, state expenditures on housing kind of across the board and found myself thinking about the state emergency housing fund, which is a very large amount of money. Um, the Commonwealth spends a great deal, uh, every year, uh, sheltering people and helping them transition out of, um, hotel rooms and shelters. And, and I just wonder if there might be some kind of viable model instead of the state spending all this money on rents, which of course, then they have no residual value, right? You just spend rent. There's no residual value. There's no asset at the end. If there isn't some way to use those funds to create a stronger incentive to build ADUs that would be under multi-year contract to the state to provide emergency housing. So this is a substitution effect where instead of the state spending money on rents where there's no residual long-term value, they help private parties build a housing unit that will be under a multi-year contract to the state. Now I did, I ran some scenarios on this and I didn't know how to build in all the costs of floating a bond to front end load this to get money. Uh, and then, you know, the later flows would be, the state would be paying under contract to the owner of the ADU to, um, house person in the emergency program. But I did enough of the numbers to make myself feel that there's probably something viable there. Um, that it would be a way to get people into better quality housing than the state is paying for now. That, um, this paying for the same number of households housed per per, you know, days per year, the state could drive its costs down. Um, and there'd be the effect of, uh, adding to the overall housing, um, supply over time. Um, I worked my numbers on basically a seven-year contract between the state emergency housing body and private homeowners in which it was front, the relationship was front end loaded with a grant from the state. And it was forgiven in increments over a period of seven years, as long as they kept their unit in the program. And then the property only owners were getting a monthly flow of income paying for the people in the unit. I built in things like, um, uh, guarantee of, uh, 10 months of payment at a minimum. If the state didn't fully, um, uh, use the ADU capacity, I built in, um, a budget of $5,000 a year for repairs, if the tenants did damage to the property. Jean, Jean, this is a terrific idea. And I'm wondering, before we get into too many of the weeds, whether, uh, I don't want to interrupt, uh, this one, I was going on long. Go ahead. No, I think it's an interesting concept. Jean, I'd love to, I'd love to see your numbers. First of all, the other thing I would point you to is the state of Vermont has a somewhat similar, um, concept to what you're, to what you're talking about, um, where they, and they implemented this during the pandemic when they had ARPA money and they were looking for a way to use that ARPA money, create some housing opportunities and how some people who had emergency needs. So, um, I'd encourage you to take a look at their example as well. Yeah, I think that's a great, a really terrific suggestion, Jean, and we should look at it more carefully and, but get it, we shouldn't get into the math and all the assumptions that you made in your modeling at this point. Yeah, no, that's fine. Yeah, but we can come back to that in a, in another meeting, but, um, I, I want to make sure Dana can plow through whatever else she's got prepared, but thank you for that Jean. Yeah, I, I, I don't have anything about, um, I did, I wanted to hear from you all, uh, what you're looking for. I don't, I know that, um, Kristen's here and I know she's working with other communities, so I don't know if they, if other communities that she's working with have other ideas. What I would say, you know, what I would say to leave you guys with is a couple of things. One is looking back at your bylaw, make sure that it is allowing, um, as many ADUs as, as possible. I know you guys are also concerned about keeping your affordable, uh, number up and, but what I would say is ADUs are, um, um, the phrase I've been using is all ADUs are good ADUs, right? They're, they're not all going to be affordable, but they're going to create a new housing opportunity for someone who needs it, especially if they're going to be used year round for someone to live in it. So this could be, even if it's not affordable, it could be for your, you know, your elderly parents to, to live close by for a caregiver, for a, um, you know, young family member to move, move back, someone who works in your community. So that's the first thing I would say is to, I know you guys are concerned about affordability, but starting with making sure ADUs can get built is really important. And so looking back at those bylaws and making sure, and, and looking at applications that you're getting for ADUs and making sure that you're allowing the types of ADUs you want to see and not restricting them unnecessarily. And then as far as affordability, I do think there are some examples like the well-cleat one where even a small amount, I do know they've also executed a couple of those, um, those forgivable loans already. So not only do they have the concept, but they have a couple of examples where it's, where it's, um, in place. So they could give you some really good ideas about what was it that really threw the potential, um, borrowers to them. And was that $10,000 enough similar to what Jean is saying? Like at what, at what point does the incentive hit a point that it really encourages that, that affordability, um, and how are they monitoring it? I think they may have a relationship with the, someone here from the housing authority, might have a relationship with the housing authority for some of those, um, those monitoring, or maybe someone like an RHSO would be a good place to go for that type of monitoring. Um, and then I would also say to encourage you to, you know, get out the word about those existing resources that are out there. We'll be sharing as much information about our incentive program as soon as, as soon as we can. Oh, and that I think Egremont, if they've done a little bit of legwork on the, um, the tax, uh, idea, property tax, the property tax exemption, um, I think they might be a really great place to, to chat, um, see if they've made any, any headway with their town council about the opportunity. Um, what's interesting about it is they are not, like I said, they're not thinking about it just for ADUs. They're thinking about it for rentals more broadly, which could also be a great way to think about, um, affordability in Wayland, not just as ADUs, but in some of the rental opportunities. You think about it all the time. Yeah, exactly. So, um, so I think that's what I've got. I don't know if you, if folks have any other questions. I see Kristen has a hand there. Did somebody? Kristen. Kristen. Hi there. Can you hear me all right? Perfectly. Yeah. Okay, great. Um, I just had a couple of things and maybe you've already talked about them in the first half hour, so I apologize, but, um, I'm not sure if, Dina, if you've, did you touch on the CDAC's, like, home modification loan program? Okay. Um,
and then the other thing I was going to mention, um, and Robert, Robert and I had talked about this actually after the last meeting, but about dwelling conversions. So, there are some communities that allow for dwelling conversions, whether by special permit or by right. So, um, particularly in communities that have very large homes, um, and it allows for, um, an individual to divide up or carve up their existing house. Um, but it's different than an ADU. It's just, it's called a dwelling conversion, so you can be a little bit more creative in the size or the context. Um, for example, you could say any home built prior to, you know, 2000 can do a dwelling conversion by right. They can carve it up, um, and basically make a duplex out of it if they want to, because the house already exists, right? You're not creating a new building. Visually, it doesn't make a difference to people. It looks the same. Um, but you're really just carving that structure up, um, for maybe someone that doesn't need that large home anymore, but they want to stay in the community and it provides them a way to stay, but also, um, provides another housing opportunity for someone else. Um, and then the other thing I was going to mention is, um, Acton is looking into the property tax exemption, um, uh, initiative, right, or law right now too. They're doing some analysis with their assessor. Um, so they're, they're pretty far along. Um, one of the things that they're looking at now is particularly what population they would want to focus on to help, um, looking at, you know, what, what, um, household AMI is the most highest cost burden. And then also what is there out on the market today for rental. And so trying to, to figure out what they would focus on and then looking at the capital outlay to see where, you know, where their breakeven point would be. So they're a kind of a community that I would kind of pay attention to Bedford might be looking into it, into the future. Um, so those are the two that we're aware of that seem to have interest. That's kind of moving. Acton seems to be a little bit further along, but, um, they're still in the investigative fees. Kristen, could you just say again, where is the dwelling conversion program being implemented? Um, Acton has a dwelling conversion program. Um, there's another town too. I can't remember off the top of my head right now, but it's, it's similar. Okay. That's very useful. I mean, I'd say every ADU is a good aid, a good, a good thing, ADU, and every, every new dwelling that's created, it's a good new dwelling, whether it complies as an ADU or not, it would be a value added to have an extra unit. So I think we can paraphrase that. Thank you for those suggestions.
Do you want to mention, um, that the, Robin is, Robin Royce is also on the planning board and we have, the planning board last year wanted to be progressive and pass the amendments that were required to comply with the law, but also wanted at the time to pass more progressive and allow larger ADUs by special permit. And unfortunately it didn't work out because we wanted to, the planning board overall wanted to make sure that the law, all the regulations in the by-law that relates to the law passed and don't, didn't want to mix them up with a two third vote with a, assuming majority vote. And so the planning board this year after passing the, the by-right amendments is, is proposing to allow, uh, larger ADUs by special permit from the planning board at this springtown meeting. So the planning board is already trying to think of the next steps for just, um, plain ADUs that you can, you can build. I think then that the next step after that would be a little more brainstorming of how to, to incorporate more progressive steps to allow for affordable dwelling units or how to put in more carrots to encourage more people to build those. So there is more motivation that's happening and it is progressing, but it, a lot of those things, it takes time and energy from all different communities and, and members of different boards. So I do want to appreciate that all the feedback and all the work that people have done on the planning board and the housing partnership and the housing trust to kind of get us to this next step. Yeah. And I should have, I should have been clear. So the, um, the ADU regulations talk, if you read them, they talk about protected use ADUs, um, over and over. You'll see this acronym P ADUs. And these are those 900 square foot or smaller ADUs are protected use ADUs. And those are the ADUs that are covered in the, in the by-law. Um, but many communities do have, they, they call them different things. They call them the, the Arlington ADU or the Lexington ADU or, or just larger ADU that are often up to 1200 square feet. And they, they can, you don't have to require a special permit, but often they, they require a special permit for that, um, larger ADU. We decided to do special permits because I mean, some houses in Weyland, if you're looking at like a percentage of square footage, it could be huge ADUs. And it just seemed like it was an opportunity to just check in and make sure that people weren't really basically looking to divide up and condominiumize their house. And, um, but you know, in Weyland, we've had not had many applications since we, since the law, because most people want larger than 900 square foot. And so we have like some pent up demand right now. We think we've, there's a lot of people come like, when are you going to allow the large ones? When are you going to allow the large ones? Because it, you know, with larger lots and larger houses in Weyland, most people want much larger than 900 square feet. Is it, uh, the applications public? Yes. Are you asking, are you asking the question? Yes. Yeah. There's, I think the last time I knew there was like 9%, but, uh, I think, but we did the, the, the, the building department did all the reporting last fall. And there were at least like four or five that were approved or going through the process. So there's been, there's been some, but we've definitely heard from feedback at the public hearing from people like, we just need another 100 feet, square feet. If we just had another 100 square feet, just to make sure that we had enough space to, to do what we want to do for ADU. So the plane board was definitely, I can't just want to speak exactly what I was thinking, but we didn't want it to have a ratio or a percentage or have a cap. We were like, let's just see what happens. And if people need a hundred square feet, yeah, that's an, that's an, that's pretty much a no brainer, but someone wants 2,000 square feet ADU depends. Are you want a 12-year-old lot? Maybe, maybe not. Like just, we don't know what the, what the number of the magic number is. I know that was something we were trying to figure out, but I think at this point, like within the next hundred square feet, if you have a, a 1200 square foot of such an apartment and you need, you know, you need, maybe you need to make an ADU, you know, appropriate and someone needs, you know, a larger kitchen or they need a larger bathroom. Like those are considerations the plane board should be looking at when they need to make a special part in finding. So, so we'll, we'll see what happens. We'll see if there's a, you know, there's been a backlog and people are just going to explode when, when it's allowed by a special permit. We've, you know, one consideration, if it's a, people are looking to build a flat for elderly parents to move into, then they want it to be wheelchair accessible. So they need extra space for that, or they want a two bedroom and all these other things. But one of the other changes for making, I think I was explaining before the meeting started was that right now when our, our AADUs are all special permit, because we were looking to control the deed restrictions and make sure that people were working with the WHA and in the new bylaw, if it passes at town meeting, the AADUs under 900 square feet, go to special permit, go to by right. And then Robert will be in charge of monitoring all that paperwork instead of it coming through planning board. So I will say to the accessible question, that is a category under the design challenge, because we understand and there are, this is a new, new field for builders too. So there's a lot of great designs that are coming out there. There's a lot of manufactured AADUs out there that are, you know, they're easier and they kind of come together nicely and they can be accessible. They can be designed in a way that is, you know, making really good use. I got to tour a great, a great AADU when the governor made her announcement about some of the incentive programs, a really smart use of the 900 square feet. So I think that's part of it too, with the design challenge is helping people like see physically what a 900 square foot AADU could be because people, if you can't really visualize what that, what that is, and you think you need bigger. And I'm correct that they have to be publicly available to correct the design, the design. Yes, the design, the design winners will be put together in a public book. Um, just the winners or any. Um, that's a good, I actually don't know the answer to that. I think so. Yeah, I think it's anybody who submits, I think, right? Well, they're all public, they're all public entries. I think that I just want to comment that that's a really good idea, what you guys did. Yeah. I mean, it's a really creative, good idea, making these plans available publicly and providing an incentive for develop, you know, the car protects developers to, yeah, to participate. I, I want to make sure we have a little bit of time for Wyn Mallett to say a few words, but I want to make sure that this part of the conversation is nothing else, nothing else from me, and nothing else from you. Any, any other question? Wyn is here to talk a little bit about, they've been getting morphing into the physical side of construction, so this, I think, is a good opportunity, Wyn, for you to say a couple of words about your thoughts. Thank you. Yeah, um, I feel like I'm basically like the rest of us, you know, um, gathering information and so forth, but from the construction and a few observations, um, I mean, just the, uh, the, the builders who I've worked with, um, in this area, the, the cost is, is really, I mean, it's, it's almost a brick wall, so to speak, to build, um, uh, a 900 square foot building at, um, what's close to 400 square foot, and then if you do the, uh, what the mortgage would be on that, and if there are taxes, that's a very interesting question, where there are taxes, um, required on that, um, you know, before long, you're, you're really having to charge, and for the homeowner to then make a profit on, on the fact that they've built this, they're charging, you have to charge, you know, four thousand dollars a month rent, and that's, so that's, so there's, um, it's something that's not working at that end of the equation, and, um, some of the data that you were describing for the state, it would be very interesting to have would be just, what is the demographic of this first wave of, of ADUs, because I, I suspect that I, I have no basis for knowing this, but that a lot of them are sort of pent-up, um, call it sort of in-family solutions, okay, and that's, those are, are generally not cost conscious, there, there's a, such an overwhelming need, so what's going to happen next is, uh, a confrontation with sort of the, the nitty-gritty, where, uh, you know, suddenly the cost really is a major factor, um, and I'll, uh, address that momentarily, because, uh, uh, the comments that Jean made were, were quite apropos in her proposal to that, but the, the other thing that's, that's, uh, um, it's just kind of an underlying factor that I see, is that suddenly, um, uh, homeowners are, to, to access the affordability components, are really taking on a function that, that normally was provided by the state, okay, it's, they find affordable housing, suddenly, you know, people who are used to having their suburban house are suddenly, um, saying, well, I think this is a good thing, and I can use some income, um, but I'm also now becoming part of, in a sense, a government program, and there's very little understanding of the kind of life changes, uh, that it takes suddenly for someone who's been, um, you know, just a suburban house owner, suddenly be, uh, not only a landlord, but a landlord for someone from, um, you know, uh, radically different economic basis, okay, and there's enthusiasm for that, and there's also trepidation, so it's a, it's, it's a really important factor, um, and I don't know what kind of control, um, uh, I mean, we, we have an ADU on our property that was built on the old format, uh, uh, 30 years ago, um, and it's worked out, you know, just spectacularly for, as, as a benefit, and all that sort of thing, but when the person passes on, we, you know, considering, well, then how do we rent that, um, and we want to be able to choose who we want to live with, um, and, uh, whether they're low income or, or whatever, so that's, that's something that, that I think anyone entering into this, um, process needs to have a very explicit, what, what, what, what am I taking on in, in this process, because they won't, you know, most people will say, well, I, I need the money, but I, I'm afraid to be, um, uh, suddenly in something where I'm not under control of my own property, um, uh, but back to the, the economic thing, and one of the things that was really, uh, fascinating in Gene's analysis was just how, um, and I, I went through it, and, uh, came up with my own numbers, which I've run before, but, um, uh, uh, the, uh, it, to build, to build, to build a, uh, uh, an independent ADU that would be functional for a family, uh, a new, a new family coming, coming in, um, uh, is, um, which is not, not the, uh, you know, one of the things that, that made Gene's program work was that it really looked at what happens if someone takes an existing house and carves it up, okay, and call that an ADU. I'm, I'm, I'm a little bit confused as to the difference between house adjustment program, whatever that was, and why that just isn't an ADU, um, but that is a way to make it affordable, but, um, there's a, I think, a really interesting and important, um, category of, of housing, which I'm interested in as a builder, and as a designer, which is, um, um, in a sense creating a miniature neighborhood within the property, because that's what, that's what came about on our properties, you know, it's a, it's a neighborhood of two of, you know, what's become close friends and so forth, um, and it doesn't work financially to build that, so one of the things that I was, uh, going back to, um, um, first of all was the, the amount of incentive from the state that would be required to, to have that happen, um, which is at the upper end, but very, but could be very cost effective, as Jane outlined. The other thing was to, um, uh, replicate the, um, uh, called the triple-decker solution that made it possible for just about anyone to get off the boat and build a house in Somerville and make it work, you know, and so this is a question for, for town planning, which is, um, to me, I, I, it would, uh, seem necessary that to be able to build two ADUs on a property so that you have, you're creating, in a sense, a lateral triple-decker is the only way that you could, um, uh, really start to bridge that chasm of affordability at, you know, at, call it, um, um, you know, without going into, I know there are special programs that could make it work, but, um, uh, that's, that's one thing that, that I'd throw in there is that the, the, the towns and the town planning really have to look that, you know, uh, that kind of measure to make it work, um, and no, no increase in taxes and there, there are some septic ideas and so forth, but right now, um, the, um, it's, it's, the, uh, chasm and financially is very, very large. I would, yes, the, the financial barrier is the biggest one and I will say, anecdotally, your question about who these original, um, chunk of ADUs are for, it's generally for family members. That's exactly it. It's, those are the folks who are really ready to build an ADU and the money is not to say it's not a barrier, but it's not the only reason they're, they're building the ADU. So anecdotally, that, that is to your question about two ADUs. That's an interesting idea about how it would make it like a ladder. I like the idea of a lateral triple decker. Um, it's an interesting thing that this was a big, a big conversation in putting the regulations together. The way that the law was written, only one ADU can be allowed by right. Um, but towns can allow a second ADU on the same property by special permit. They have to have a special permit process. Um, they cannot allow it by right under the protected use ADU regulations, but you can have a special permit process for a second ADU on, on the property. So it might be something to do. And ours does that, but you very quickly end up bumping up against the multi-family zoning definition. And it's surprising how restrictive that is. And you can't allow that in a single dwelling district. So it's very, it's, it's not very flexible there, but we have allowed it under special permit in the new provisions that we're looking to bring to town meeting, but it's a little tricky. It's easier in a separate building. So if you build a garage and you put, you know, a big second story on it, you can divide that up into two ADUs. That's a little easier, but even then it's still questionable under the multifamily housing definitions. So is that because it's three makes it multi multifamily and not just sort of the duplex? It's, it's different when it's self-contained versus a separate building, but it's all worded so poorly that it just left us scratching our heads, but we did allow it by special. Condominium would be multifamily. No, condominium is when you have separate owners. So that's a different thing, but there's a point at which, you know, if you are taking your property and you're building a separate structure with separate units in it, shouldn't it be, there are people who say you should divide up the property then and have one piece of property and another piece of property. Um, and that avoids the multifamily issue, but it's just, it's a little messy when you start allowing more than one. It sounds like there'd be a need for substantial revisions in the bylaws. It's a good question because one of the main issues, uh, as a former zoning board member is, does it change the character of the neighborhood? And there'd be a lot of people saying, oh, it's about turning into Somerville triple deckers, you know, and that's changing the character of the neighborhood. So I think we'd have to make the zoning bylaw more friendly to increase documents. The multifamily zoning. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, but I mean, the concept of a dwelling conversion or an ADU or a lateral triple decker, they're all very appealing in terms of increasing the housing stock affordable, affordably with a small pay. I mean, I, I think they're all beneficial, but there are certainly people in town who don't want that and certainly something that would have to be put to vote at town meeting. So, so I think Wynn's point also is that, you know, I mean, if we look historically, you know, at where Wayland zoning came from, I grew up in this town and we used to have a very high value on privacy and large lots, you know, two acre, four acre lots. And I think that the culture has changed significantly. And you know, like what Wynn is describing, I'm not sure whether you have, is it condominium structure that you have on your property? No, it's, it's a, it's accessory dwelling. Um, it's, it's, it's essentially 80 years of primary dwelling, but it's two families who've been sharing a property, single owner, single owner for a long time rented or whatever. Yeah. But where I'm kind of going with this is that, um, for many years, there's been a fairly large group of aging Waylanders who were part of a co-housing group looking for somewhere to move. And initially, they wanted to move somewhere closer to transportation, which means out of Wayland because we don't really have public transportation. But as it was clear that, you know, I mean, there just was not availability, um, in the Metro Boston area for this, I think there were like 30 people in the group, like five, 10 years ago. And so they started reconsidering thinking, well, maybe there'd be ways to do things in Wayland on more of a co-housing model, which means it's, it's condominium, but it's not really condominium. It's multifamily, but it's more like ADUs. And we don't, we don't have a structure, um, that permits that kind of flexibility right now. So we're kind of, we're, we're tinkering with historical zoning. Um, you know, I mean, even the ADU it's limited by single family zoning and our multifamily overlay. Well, I mean, we don't know what we want to do with that. We really don't. Most people wanted to just comply, um, and not, unless it's never talking about again, you know, so we designated some already compliant areas. But I think, you know, going forward, we're going to have to be looking at different models of building and living. I could just pass on one thing that, you know, just occurred to me, which is that, um, if, if, if I want, and I have thought about adding a second ADU on our property, but, um, uh, for someone who, for whom that's either maybe a necessity or just something that they really want to do because they want to provide housing, um, they like that idea and they're willing to, to build and go through whatever that is in their property. But it's safe to say that every single neighbor who is not a person making that decision does not want to see that ADU go up. I mean, they might if they just happen to be an enthusiastic kind of person, but every single name, if you put up one ADU, every neighbor is going to wit is going to say my, what I had before has gone down a little bit with my view or traffic, I mean, whatever definition you have. So that, that's simply a fact of the whole process is that, um, they're going to be six people unhappy with every ADU that goes up and we just have to sort of agree beforehand that we're okay with that. I'm okay with being a little bit disappointed with, um, what I had before and what I have now because my neighbor put up an ADU and, uh, there's a little bit more noise and, you know, or, or just another sky, uh, roof skyline. Uh, uh, and I, and I say that because, um, that happens if you put up one ADU and well, it'll also happen if you put up two ADUs, but it's not really that different. It's that people do not want something to change from what they bought. They want no change. And that's just a, it's just a given within this process where we're actually filtering the housing issue into neighborhoods that have not had to deal with this as a personal issue. We built housing over there in large, you know, projects. So this is a very new kind of experience and people, I think just have to, um, uh, you know, it could be stated as, as a given. I just, I want to be mindful of the time. As we said, we would wrap up by 8 30. When I really appreciate all your many comments, they've been really informative and interesting. I just wanted to ask Dana a question. Um, one of the ways we could avoid some of these issues is if we did more internal conversion or repurposing of houses internally and given the size of many homes in Weyland, that it's more feasible than a small house, uh, elsewhere perhaps in the state. So I'm wondering whether any of your data breaks down, whether, and also given the cost issue, when you're talking about 400 square feet of, uh, $400 a square foot for new construction, that comes out to, if my math is correct, something like $360,000 for a 900 square foot unit. That is obviously, it's a chunk of change for, even if you're getting loans and whatever, it is still a very big investment in your property. Uh, and I mean, I have questions about whether or not we have any data on resale value. Probably don't, but this is going to be another area to track is to what extent is the resale value. If you have put three to $400,000 into your home, to what extent is that actually going to come back as value added? But I, I am curious, you know, one way to deal with that huge cost of, uh, new construction is if we can do more internal conversions, you know, it's Kathy, you wanted to say something. Right now with the planning board, it's just done by making it available by special permit, it's 900 plus, right? Right. So what's to prevent that? I don't understand the distinction between dwelling conversion and what's now allowed by a special permit. Clearly 900. Yeah. I think there isn't really one. I mean, you could, you could take half of your house and make it an ADU. If, as long as you give me in the somewhere dwelling conversion does not mean we're talking about ownership change, right? It is figuring out. Yeah. I think you're, I think you're right. It's just another term. Yeah. I mean, there's a point at which, you know, again, with the multifamily housing thing, because if you take one house and let's say you carve it up into four units, that's I think not going to fly in a single family, uh, single dwelling, uh, zone, but you know, welcome to apply. Yep. So, um, I, I think most people aren't going to do that. And I think a lot of ADUs, people I know in town who have, it's not an official ADU, it's generally an unofficial granny flat or something like that. It's in the house. It's the basement that got converted, maybe an attic that got converted. Um, I think there are fewer people who think I'm going to build a whole new structure. That's such a big investment. And we do, we do have people who want to do that, but it is a much bigger investment, you know, site prep and all this other stuff. Whereas an internal conversion, even if you put on a small addition to sort of bump out a wall here or there, it's not the same as building a whole structure. Um, but you know, as these design competitions all over the country, um, are pushing prefab units and even drop in place units, you know, the people who are buying containers and converting them into a shipping container and converting it into an ADU, um, you know, that the site prep gets done, but then you just, they literally lift it off a truck and drop it in place. I've got tiny houses. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, but, and those are again, prefab things and that decreases your costs, but site prep and septic are still a formidable cost. So they're obviously a town that doesn't have it. Yeah. Um, I, I misspoke. So actually we do have some updated data on the full year from some communities. And so to your question of attached and detached on the website, the state website, um, the updated one, and some of this was, again, it's not complete because some communities have not yet responded to the year end survey, but it looks like approved accessory dwelling units. There were 1224, um, 636 of them were either attached or interior. So that could be like an interior one or a bump out, like you said, and then 588 of those were detached. Um, the, the thing with interior, interior or attached, which is really more complicated is like, it is so house dependent, right? It's very hard to, we can get some estimates of like the general detached ADU costs this much. The prefab looks like this, this kind of general square can fit on your property. And you'll see there's a company called backyard ADU. They have like six off the shelf designs. And it's like, it's an L, it's a T it's an I that you can just kind of plop it again, their site prep and other considerations, the interior or attached ones are a lot more complicated and it's kind of runs the gamut. If you have to dig out more of your basement or even to add stairs or additional egresses. Um, and then I think the other consideration on that is, you know, again, now you are not only a landlord, but you have someone living physically, uh, closer to you than a detached one, but still a great option for, for a lot of people. And I don't know as much about the, the dwelling conversion, Kristen and Robert, maybe you can talk about the main difference of that is, would just be the size differential between an AD, like an ADU has to be accessory. That's part of the, the definition. Is that the main difference? That's part of the main difference. I think, um, in the past, a lot of AD, ADUs were always looked at as, um, being accessory to in a few ways. So smaller to, um, some communities take it a little bit further that, or in the past too, that it had, the owner had to reside on the property with a dwelling conversion. That's not the case. It can be condominiumized and sold out as two separate units, um, or more, you know, it could be allowed easily in a single family district. Um, it just depends on what you want to do locally in your zoning. You know, you could, a lot of communities are changing now and allowing for, um, duplexes where only single family used to be allowed. Um, so it's really just a different way of thinking about, um, your zoning and, and what the community may be ready to discuss, um, at different times. So, um, there's also opportunities, I think here to pair, um, housing with conservation. So, you know, if you're still seeing subdivisions in your community where the lot gets entirely carved up into individual lots, you know, you could start thinking about, um, you know, how can you preserve some open space and get the homes clustered together, but allowing for maybe some incentives in terms of density bonus if you have smaller units, right? Um, and so looking at different metrics and, um, tools to do that, but bringing both of those groups together, the, the housing advocates with the conservation advocates, um, so that when you drive by, you can't maybe really see it, but, um, you're, and you're also preserving natural resources, but, um, you know, for newer homes and people that want to move into the community, um, they could be tucked back together, smaller units, but maybe more of them, but covering the same amount of land. So just thinking about things in a different way. Whelan has a conservation cluster bylaw, um, that was fairly innovative, you know, 40, 50 years ago, and it has been updated, but it may be, could be improved. Okay. Let's try to wrap up and any final comments or questions before I, um, I just wanted to maybe ask for a little bit of, um, insight. Oh, is Brian still here? Yeah. So, I mean, it, it just, it is the fact that for affordable ADUs, there is always going to be concern, um, in neighborhoods about bringing down property values, and there are always going to be concerns, um, for landlords about not having control over your property. And, you know, for example, if you have a section eight tenant, um, who is not paying the rent or is damaging the property, it's extremely, extremely difficult to extricate oneself. Um, what can we learn from housing authority experience to maybe anticipate and try to do a little better going forward so that we, um, can encourage building affordable ADUs? Yeah, I mean, um, it's, it's, it is, we are, we live in the state of Massachusetts and evicting people for non-payment, uh, and damaging property. And so, uh, extremely neighbors is, it's almost impossible. Um, so, um, I would caution somebody going into the section eight program like that, um, because we run into that all the time and we're, we're always hearing from neighbors, uh, somebody to take the trash out or, you know, somebody's got bicycles in their front yard or abandoned cars and so forth. It's hard to get movement on those issues. I would say one, one thing that we are going to be exploring as part of the incentive program is you several times, a couple of folks have made this point that you're essentially creating landlords where you may not have been a landlord before. And we do have landlord training, um, education that is done at the state level. Um, we run first time home buyer. Well, we work with partners. We run a first time home buyer program, um, mortgage program. And we work with a lot of partners to do first time home buyer education. And a lot of those first time home buyers are also buying multi-family properties too. And, and three family properties. And so they do landlord training. Um, I think that's part of it, the education piece, right? There is, of course, there's going to be some stigma and bias against affordable housing. I don't want to deny that, but when you are becoming a landlord, regardless of who your tenant is, you need to know what your, your, both your rights and your responsibilities are. And so I think pairing any sort of ADU creation with landlord education and, you know, helping folks that they can be, you know, a good landlord, they can, they can do what they need to do and they can go into it. Eyes Wide Open is part of our, part of our conversations. Um, and even for folks who are going to be renting an ADU to a family member, it's a new relationship that they're creating. Um, even if money's not changing hands, right? Now you've got your family member living in a property that you own and you're responsible to them. So I think it's a conversation that should be having, people should be having about whether they become a landlord of, uh, a triple decker or an ADU and, and what their rights and responsibilities are. Great points. All right. I think, uh, I think we're ready to wrap up and let Dana go home. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dana.
Thanks so much for doing this. Yeah. Mary, I think, uh, we're ready for public comments. Is that right? No. I think that the public has commented. Yes. I just want to make sure there's nobody else lurking in any place else that. That's it. Thank you, public, for commenting. It's been a wonderful public.
Jane would like to, um, say a few words about, uh, the 212 of the constituent report, uh, if you're willing to. As long as it's okay, because it wasn't on the agenda. Well, it's just, there's no discussion about it. It's just a report. Okay. Yeah. We should let's say the board of housing program. The town owns a massive property that we took for tax time. And there's a lot of, um, effort gone into it that Jean's committee's been on about how to repurpose that for home. I'll stay and listen. You could, uh, do you want to tell us what the 212 committee has come up with? Yeah, sure. Um, and I'll mention Brian was on the committee too. So Brian, speak up. Um, uh, we, we've concluded our work. Uh, we've finished our report, which will now go to the selectmen. It's a very interesting process. Um, the committee basically was an advisory body to collect information that might be useful to the select board in their decision-making about utilization of that site. So, uh, Tom Fay did a great job of having many, many visitors, um, come and see us who were, uh, builders or, uh, financial groups or, uh, care providers, um, in the industry, ranging from, uh, very large organizations with hundreds of properties to very small organizations who had done one property and, um, heard about all kinds of models from, um, profit, nonprofit, um, family organized projects, uh, where people got together who couldn't find housing for their disabled family member and got together and created a property, um, went pretty well. I, I think one of the things that, uh, went well in the committee that I'm happy about is in the recommendations, um, um, we're suggesting that every effort be made to organize the creation of the property, uh, so that it will, uh, add units to the SHI inventory. Um, that's not a foregone conclusion. Some properties don't, but we're hoping that the select board will, uh, look for, uh, something, um, that will provide those units. Um, there was, you know, the, it was difficult for the committee to come to a consensus and on some matters. And I did end up writing a minority opinion, uh, in the report, uh, in the report, which that was a first for me. Um, but basically said that it was my general sense that the committee felt that they had to, um, treat the zoning policy as the dominant policy and decision-making about the site, uh, rather than looking at, uh, things like the town master plan and the housing production plan, um, that put forth messages about the urgency of building, um, housing for disabled people that, you know, just units in general and more importantly affordable units. Um, and so I basically wrote a minority opinion asking that the select board think about, um, you know, under what situations can you decide that you treat policy a little differently so that you can put more units on that site than, um, we're really under discussion most of the time in the committee. Um, so we'll, we'll see how that's received. Um, Brian, would you like to add to that? Yeah, I think the community did a great job and, uh, we heard it was a real learning experience. It's a, when I started, when I threw this thing out, I, I was very simplistic in my approach and I found out how complicated different populations, uh, funding sources and so forth. So we really learned a lot, but, um, yeah, I think Jean's point about, um, utilization of properties of more than four acres there, uh, would have been nice to, uh, to utilize, get more utilization out of the site, given the, the, the asset that the town is, is contributing to this project. But, uh, anything we get built there will be a step in the, step forward in the right direction. We don't get many tax title properties. No, we don't. Is there something to preclude affordable housing separate from housing for a group home with people with disabilities so they can be integrated? In other words, an inclusive community existing on the four acres? Yeah, I, I, I think that the, the committee was pretty set on a smaller, smaller development. Just one district. They didn't, did they identify a single? They didn't, or two, two group homes? Um, well, probably two buildings, maybe eight to twelve units. It's, it sounds like that's what the outcome will be. Eight to twelve total. Okay, but that, does that mean that's what the select board will agree with, or they could, no, select, select boards would just advise me, it's like board, uh, can make their own decision. And when they have a, uh, have an on their agenda, we should be there to, yeah. Yeah. And, and express our business. That's correct. You recommended that they, the select board issue an RFP to see, and it's pretty broad, because we don't want to limit, you know, the finances and the type of services that will be provided. It's, it's, it's really going to depend on a developer and what, what associations they have with, uh, eight different agency service providers and what's financially feasible. The town has, uh, on, on many levels has recently become very focused on trying to do group homes. We do have a group home in town, but there's another developer who's got a property where he's trying to do a group home. And I think there's a lot of, uh, town-wide support for that. We're working hard on that. This is one of the major efforts. Any, thank you, Brian. Thank you, Jean. Any final comments before we, are we ready? Are we, thank you, Dana, again, for being here. Very good. Are you ready to, to adjourn? Yes. Is there a motion? They move to adjourn. And the second, Kathy. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Thank you.